THE PUPIL 



VERSUS 

T H K 
TEACHER 




By RICHARD LOCHNER 



THE PUPIL 



VERSUS 



THE 
TEACHER 






BY 



RICHARD LOCHNEP 



L 



LBI015 






MADE BY 

TIMES PRINTING HOUSE 

1317 Market Street 

Philadelphia 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

MAY. 25 1901 

Copyright entry 
CLASS 4X.XXC. N». 

Jcoo 

COPY B. 



Copyright 

applied for 

April, i 9 oi 



TO EVERY 
CONSCIENTIOUS TEACHER 
IN AND OUT OF 
THE PROFESSION 
THIS BOOK IS 
RESPECTFU ELY 
DED ICATED 



PREFACE 

THE CHIEF PRACTICAL AIM OF THIS BOOK 
IS TO ELEVATE THE POSITION OF THE 
TEACHER BY INTERPRETING SCHOOL LIFE 
OF TO-DAY IN THE LIGHT OF ITS HISTORY 
AND FROM THE STANDPOINT OF AN IDEAL- 
ISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 

PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER, I9OO 



CONTENTS 



PAQE 

I . THE PUPIL VERSUS THE 

TEACHER i 

II. HERBERT SPENCER'S 
"EDUCATION" . . . . 67 

III. THE SCHOOL AND THE 
CRIMINAL 101 

IV. SCHOOL SUPPLIES . . 106 

V. DARWINISM AND THE 

TEACHER 108 

VI. HARMONY VERSUS THE LINE 

OF LEAST RESISTANCE no 

VII. REFERENCES TO AUTHORS 166 

VIII. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 140 

IX. SOME APPROPRIATE 
QUOTATIONS . . .146 



CHAPTER I. 
Historic Developments. 

In the olden time a child was often viewed as 
a little lump of wickedness; to-day too often as 
a little angel. The see-saw of history has seldom 
brought about a stranger change. During the 
Nineteenth Century the young Hercules, natu- 
ral science, has come forward with giant strides. 
Though fraught with much good to the human 
race, yet a multitude of evils has followed in its 
wake. A hundred years have passed and the 
threatening clouds of the French Revolution still 
hover over us. Has that great experiment in 
democracy been a failure? In belittling the past 
and in its hatred for those in power, did it not 
go too far? In trying to begin anew, did it not 
wish to throw away the very foundations on 
which it must build? With much of this spirit 
in our life to-day, may we not be in danger of 
losing the soul of truth hidden in the errors of 
the older age? 

Long, long before that terrible outburst, were 
sown the seeds of the new gospel, and when the 
fury of the storm had been spent, scarcely any 
side of human life had escaped. Of all the 
changes good and bad, that followed, the school 
got its share, and there is need to look more 
deeply into the thoughts upon which our school 



work is grounded with a view to getting rid of 
the evils, and by holding to the good, raise school 
work to a higher plane. 

Laissez faire in economics, do-as-you-please 
in ethical theory, unbridled freedom in abstract 
democracy, and natural individualism in educa- 
tion have as their rock-bottom thought this as- 
sumption: What is natural, is good. When that 
is cast into the limbo of departed vanities, where 
it should be, the writings of the naturalist school 
may be rated at their real worth. 

A little thinking will show that the word "nat- 
ural" is quite rubber-like; it can be stretched to 
cover many sins. Certain easy-going folk, whose 
consciences take vacations, need never be with- 
out a balm to heal the wounds which otherwise 
would prove painful. Their wrong-doing comes 
natural to them. Certain light-fingered gentry 
may find their hands wandering toward some- 
body's pocket. Perhaps such is easy and nat- 
ural for him to do; though, as a reason for theft 
it will be likely to carry little weight with the po- 
liceman who gets hold of the thief. 

Even were every natural thing easy, it would 
not therefore be good. In the widest meaning of 
the word, everything is natural, and if what is 
natural is good, everything is good. This is 
shocking enough to one's moral sense to bring 
the whole thought under suspicion. Much that 
is natural is surely bad and is so treated by 
writers who tell us to do this and that, or to use 
this method and that method because it is the 
natural one. That some things are good and 



should be sought for, and others bad and should 
be avoided, is true alike of law, morals, religion 
and economics. 

Should nature be our guide? Should we do 
as nature does? Nature may mean so many 
things that it means nothing. Nature neither 
weeps nor rejoices. Often cruel, merciless and 
wasteful, nature would justify the most blood- 
thirsty deeds that blacken the pages of history. 
"Nature, as positive observation reveals her to 
us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our 
reverence or our approbation. Once apply any 
moral test to her conduct, and as J. S. Mill has 
so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a monster. 
There is no crime that men abhor or perpetrate 
that nature does not commit daily on an exag- 
gerated scale. She knows no sense either of jus- 
tice or mercy. ... At one moment she will be 
blessing a country with plenty, peace and sun- 
shine; and ^he will the next moment ruin the 
whole of it by an earthquake. Now she is the 
image of thrift, now of prodigality; now of the 
utmost purity, now of the most revolting filth; 
and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any moral 
standard at all, her capacities for what is admira- 
ble not only make her crimes the darker, but 
they also make her virtues partake of the nature 
of sin." 

The friend of naturalism who urges a choice 
of the good things in nature, so far gives up his 
fight and owns that he has been sailing under 
false colors, for he sees that it is the goodness of 
the thing and not its naturalness that makes it 



worthy of our choice. Nature from a human 
standpoint is a mixture of good and bad, though, 
as having no personality, deserving neither praise 
nor blame, it may be better to say nature is mor- 
ally indifferent. Knowing this, it becomes our 
task rather to raise natural forces to a moral 
level, than to sit idly by and growl at the fate 
or ill luck that placed us here, like a brute growl- 
ing at the sunshine and too lazy to find or make 
a shady place for himself. 

In the childhood of the race man was warlike 
and savage; he built a wall about his city; his 
lower nature ruled; he knew little how to fight 
disease, famine and pestilence, and perhaps less 
how to make nature's powers serve him. As the 
race grew older, his warlike nature slowly be- 
came softened ; he even comforts his dying enemy 
and nurses the wounded back to health; the old, 
the feeble and unfortunate are lovingly cared for; 
nature's forces are harnessed; and man's better 
parts grow in power over the worse. 

Were we to think naturalism altogether bad, 
we would do a great wrong. Great is its faith in 
the goodness of man; yet with all its truth, it 
fails to mark off sharply the good from the bad; 
it gives us no test we can trust; and in its eager- 
ness to foster the good, it forgets to crush out the 
bad. Both its virtues and vices have found a 
place in the school-room; and helped by a great 
philosophy of the day, it has given to childhood a 
meaning unique in the history of education. 



CHAPTER II. 
Evolution and School Method. 

Closely linked with the doctrine of naturalism 
has been the great law of evolution, which though 
bearing many words of wisdom, yet more than 
once has been a harbor for those who like to 
back up their fads by a catchy phrase or strike 
their enemies dumb by uttering the magical 
words of a popular philosophic formula, "From 
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous." Yet 
with all its faults I love it still. In one way it 
has been worked almost to death. Its upholders, 
fixing their gaze chiefly upon the good things it 
has brought, have twisted its meaning in the in- 
terest of that easy-going optimism which finds 
in a new phrase a cure-all for the woes of the 
world. There is a darker side to the picture. 

Though we can not say with Schopenhauer 
that this world is the worst of all possible worlds, 
for we can fancy it much worse; neither can we 
say with Leibnitz that it is the best. Wickedness 
as well as goodness has evolved. The mere fact 
of evolution carries with it no guarantee of right- 
eousness. Evolution is not a moral law; the 
survival of the fittest is not now upon a moral 
plane, and therein lies its greatest weakness. 

The growth of knowledge has wrought 
changes in the ways of teaching children ancl 
governing them. New methods seem to spring 



up like mushrooms. Teachers are urged to teach 
this, because the child likes it; or that, because 
it is interesting; or the other, because it is nat- 
ural. These stand or fall with their underlying- 
assumptions: What the child likes is therefore 
good — What is interesting is therefore good — 
What is natural is therefore good. None of these 
is the real ground of our choice either of branches 
to be taught or methods of teaching. Each may 
be good, but not necessarily good. Each may be 
worth something to the teacher, but only as a 
means to an end, and the end must be ethical. 
Wherever the child's likings and interests over- 
ride the moral ideal, those likings should be ren- 
dered harmless. What is special to each child 
can be fostered in the school-room only when it 
conforms to the ethical laws which the school 
aims to realize. Not to do so brings lawlessness 
into the school under the plea of individual free- 
dom and makes the whims of childhood the guide 
of our school practice. It were vain to deny that 
danger lurks in the free rein given to Young 
America. 

The Revival of Learning; the Reformation; 
the break-up of the feudal system; the uprisings 
of the people against constituted authority; the 
growth of natural science with its companions, 
agnostic philosophy and hedonistic ethics, have 
all helped to carry the principle of individual 
freedom far beyond reasonable bounds, even in 
some cases so far as to declare too much freedom 
to be impossible and all restraint criminal. At 
bottom it is a question of what kind of freedom 



we are to have; the best is the only kind worthy 
of the name and that is moral freedom. The 
sooner we adapt our school methods to that end 
the better. 

The results of the new methods in education 
do not bear out their rosy promises ; the trouble 
is in the methods, which are based on a one- 
sided view of human nature, and though their 
main strength has come from the evolutionists, 
yet if we look more searchingly into the facts 
of evolution, there will be found much showing 
how poorly its meaning has been read. 

If the law of evolution be true, what is the 
child? Not a bundle of goodness, by any means. 
Indeed, it has been said, "Man was formerly little 
less than an angel; evolution has made him little 
more than a monkey." In body and mind the 
child of the civilized man shows many traits char- 
acteristic of the adult savage. The facts gathered 
by Darwin and others point to a more or less 
brutal ancestry. In spite of the work of the 
Peace Societies and other humanizing agencies, 
"the ape and tiger" in man are rather slow in dy- 
ing. In the year of our Lord 1900, certain 
brawny bruisers received over $30,000 for pum- 
meling each other in the presence of several 
thousand spectators. It is needless to multiply 
instances illustrating the ways in which natural 
impulses seek satisfaction even in the centres of 
civilization. 

Compare the civilized adult with the child ac- 
cording to the theory of evolution. The man is 
farther removed from savagery. He has passed 



through stages, physical, mental and moral, 
which are unmeaning to the child. The child 
concerns himself with things rather than 
thoughts, with physical activities rather than self- 
criticism. He likes tales of fairies, goblins, drag- 
ons and other monsters; the grotesque and ab- 
normal delight him; he admires bigness rather 
than moral character. These impair his judg- 
ment, while wider and more varied experience 
makes man the more responsible being and gives 
a balance of mind and worth of judgment impos- 
sible to the child. In his ability to organize, in 
his greater specialization of function, in his 
knowledge and guidance of industrial forces, man 
proves himself on a higher economic plane than 
the child. Eliminating individual exceptions and 
allowing for the conflict of economic and physical 
with the moral and aesthetic and the many ways 
in which they intertwine and change each other, 
our abstract comparison proves man better than 
the child. Such is the result evolution leads us to 
look for and such we would expect on Ziller's 
culture epoch theory. 

With even greater force the same truth applies 
to the teacher. If the ordinary man be superior 
to the child, still greater is the superiority of the 
teacher, socially, mentally, morally, aesthetically 
and economically. The teacher is one of the fa- 
vored few. Less than ten per cent, of the pupils 
that begin education in the elementary schools 
ever reach the high schools. If education ele- 
vates, not many pupils will attain the eminence 
of the teacher. 

8 



The teacher then being theoretically and, as a 
rule, practically a better being than the child, let 
us examine some obvious conditions of American 
life to see whether the teacher is rated at her true 
worth. 



CHAPTER III. 
The Child vs. the Teacher. 

On more than one occasion a certain super- 
vising principal said, "Nine-tenths of the disorder 
in the school-room is the fault of the teacher." 
This and other sayings of his rest on the assump- 
tion, "The child has a right to take advantage of 
the teacher and the teacher must blame herself 
if she can not prevent him." Many a time a 
teacher on taking an unruly boy to that principal, 
was told, "Miss B., it is your fault." A not very 
polite but quite forcible proverb sums up that 
principal's individualistic philosophy, "Each one 
for himself and the devil take the hindmost." 

Teachers commenting on deficiencies in the 
children were told, "It is your duty to teach this, 
that and the other to overcome these deficiencies." 
She could take nothing for granted. The child 
was all rights, no duties; the teacher all duties 
and no rights that the child was bound to respect. 
Such a theory stands almost self-condemned. It 
is a glaring and extreme reaction from the histor- 
ical school and not only fails to make allowance 
for the obvious deductions from the theory of 
evolution, but also overlooks facts essential to the 
ethical adjustment of the relations between pupil 
and teacher. 

When the child becomes a god needing pro- 
pitiation, and the teacher a worshiper at the 

10 



shrine, the teacher's position is certainly humil- 
iating. More than one American boy views the 
teacher as a lawful prey. Flashy, trashy novels, 
the influence of the streets, the comparative laxity 
of home discipline help to render many children 
less ruly in school and the teacher's lot more bur- 
densome. Even in the high schools, pupils play 
tricks on their betters, the professors, and even 
conspire to produce disorder in the class. Chil- 
dren and especially spoiled ones have too much 
power, and they feel it and exercise it. Having 
its basis in naturalism, it manifests a contempt 
for authority, a don't-care-I-do-as-I-please spirit. 
It is no uncommon thing to hear a pupil speak 
disrespectfully of a teacher. "Do you think I'm 
going to mind her?" Some even are brazen 
enough to say to a teacher, "You are only a pub- 
lic servant. My father pays his taxes. I am en- 
titled to an education." 

Such a system in sacrificing the teacher sac- 
rifices the school work also. A few determined, 
vicious pupils have a teacher almost at their 
mercy. Only the exceptional teacher can stand 
the strain of discipline and suffer but little there- 
from. In theory teachers are granted but little 
authority; to maintain that they must be wide- 
awake, continually on the alert, meeting each out- 
break as it occurs; held responsible for successful 
teaching and discipline by supervisors, assistant 
superintendents, directors and parents, no won- 
der many teachers go home wearied and worried 
and perhaps passing a sleepless night or dis- 
turbed by bad dreams, return to school in an irri- 

ii 



table frame of mind. A teacher may be very 
good morally and possess ability to communicate 
knowledge and yet fail in an American school be- 
cause she is lacking in the doubtfully desirable 
qualities of the police officer. Not only the 
teacher but also the best boys and girls in a class 
suffer from the disorder occasioned partly by lax 
theories. Just as the good citizen pays for the 
keep of criminals in the jails, so does the good 
pupil pay for the disorder caused by the bad. 
The bad boy is kept in the room at the expense 
of the good, the better sacrificed for the worse. 

My appeal is therefore for greater strictness 
and less laxity; for increase in the authority of the 
teacher and decrease in the power of the children. 

I once heard an eminent Philadelphia econ- 
omist and theologian say, "The American child 
is the terror of the European hotel. In reaction 
from the strict methods of our forefathers the 
pendulum has swung too far in the opposite di- 
rection. Let us help to get it back to the right 
place." 

In a lecture delivered July 6, 1900, Professor 
Schoenrich said, "The fundamental evil in Ameri- 
can education is a lack of training to obedience. 
'Obedience is the first duty of the pupil, of the 
child, of man,' is one of the first principles in the 
German system of education. 'But in a free coun- 
try,' we often hear said, 'we have no right to com- 
pel the child to obedience; it must be convinced 
by reasoning.' Aye, if children understood rea- 
soning it would not be necessary to first educate 
them." 

12 



Referring" to tricks played by pupils, I once 
heard a French professor say, "Such sings would 
not be sought of at ze Academie." I have rea- 
son to believe that they would not be tolerated in 
Germany, either. 

Speaking of desirable methods a principal said. 
"The teacher should win the respect of the pu- 
pils. " So utterly perverted has become the 
standpoint! Stated in that abstract way, I do 
not hesitate to say that the very reverse is nearei 
the truth, "The pupils should win the respect ol 
the teacher." Respect is a relative term. There 
are different kinds. The teacher, as such, is en- 
titled to respect for her authority. It is not to 
be won. It is to be given as deserved. It should 
be guaranteed. We now have the anomaly of 
compulsory education without compulsory obe- 
dience. The very idea of teacher as superior and 
of pupil as inferior carries with it the fundamental 
assumption of obedience to authority. Pupils are 
not at school to be critics of the teacher; the 
teacher is not there at their approval. Criticism, 
appointment and removal of a teacher should be 
the function of her superiors, not her inferiors. 
Qualities that one pupil will respect another may 
not. On any decent ethical theory a teacher is 
entitled to respect from pupils by virtue of her 
superior intellectual abilities, her moral character, 
her recommendations and appointment by those 
far wiser than children. If she is to win respect, 
it must be respect for additional qualifications, 
such as brilliancy, lovableness, not for her author- 
ity. The integrity of the school rests upon the 

13 



inferiority of pupil to teacher and the obedience 
of the former to the latter. That is absolutely 
essential; for we often obey and respect those 
whom we do not love and often disrespect and 
disobey those whom we do. Does that sound 
odd? None the less it is true. Respect for au- 
thority, not love, is the absolutely necessary 
requisite for a school system. We may have 
both, but if one must go, let it be love. Ameri- 
can children have not yet reached that culture 
epoch in which love is all in all. 

Here we may be met by the example of Pes- 
talozzi. But let those using Pestalozzi show how 
he would work in Philadelphia to-day. Could 
teachers establish relations with pupils as did 
Pestalozzi? Would it be desirable if they could? 
Is there no essential difference in the conditions 
of American life and influence of American insti- 
tutions, which spoils the analogy and weakens 
the force of the argument? Moreover, Pesta- 
lozzi's methods of teaching would scarcely meet 
with the approval of any board of education at 
this end of the nineteenth century. 

In view of all the facts, do we not pay too much 
in misdirected effort, nervous prostration, waste 
of school supplies and the long train of evils 
caused by disorderly pupils? Is it not too much 
of a sacrifice to give the teacher so little author- 
ity, so many functions and so much responsibil- 
ity? 

Believing our present system works injustice 
to all concerned, I submit the following sugges- 

14 



tions as indicating lines along which we may 
profitably direct our investigations : 

i. Minimize discipline by minimizing need 
ror it in the school-room, and thereby 

2. Minimize the nervous strain on the teacher 

(a) Guaranteeing respect for her authority in 
the matter of order. 

(b) More varied and efficient punishment than 
we now have. 

(c) Holding pupils and parents more respon- 
sible than we do now. 

3. (a) If the teacher be given proper authority 
and commensurate means for enforcing it, then 
she can be held strictly responsible for both order 
and successful teaching of the subjects. 

(b) If, however, she be denied the appropriate 
means for enforcing her authority in the school- 
room, she can be held responsible for neither. 

(c) If responsibility for order be thrown on 
parents, pupils and principals, then the teacher 
can be held responsible only for successful teach- 
ing of the subjects. 

I therefore call in question the ethical basis un- 
derlying the relations now theoretically subsist- 
ing between pupil and teacher. 

I shall now pass to a consideration of certain 
methods recommended for maintaining order 
in school. 



15 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Futility of Reasoning. 

Reasoning with children is not so good as it 
has been painted. The child as such is impulsive 
rather than rational. The limitations of his mind 
prevent him from seeing his conduct in the light 
of high moral reasons. No reasons are likely to 
change the mind of a pupil prone to argue. 
Moreover, the pupil that appreciates the reasons 
inherent in conduct and can ac + because of them 
will seldom be in need of reasoning or moral 
suasion. What reasons can be given for good 
conduct in school? Duty to self, to classmates, 
to teacher, to parents, to society; these may be 
reinforced by love of teacher and parents, by the 
desire to please them, by the honor of having 
done well, by the other good results that follow 
and the bad ones avoided. Are not these the 
very best of reasons? If these reasons do not make 
a pupil good, reason is futile. More than one 
teacher has found that out by bitter experience. 

Moreover, unless judiciously used, reasoning 
has a tendency to lower the teacher to the level 
of the pupil. It has the appearance of putting the 
teacher under obligation to justify her conduct 
to the pupil, who may come in time to view it as 
his right to have an explanation of the teacher. 
The opposite course is far better. He is to obey 
because he is pupil; she to require obedience be- 
caues she is teacher; the reasons therefor the 

16 



pupil will understand and appreciate when older, 
though he may already know the most important. 
A fallacy runs through the entire argument in 
favor of reasoning and moral suasion — namely, 
when he knows what is right, he will therefore do 
what is right. Non sequitur, as any intelligent 
person knows. Not only so, but we often sup- 
pose a child does not know, when he does. Af- 
ter going to school for six or seven years he is a 
stupid child that does not know what the school 
requires in the way of order. Try a seventh 
grade child; ask him why talking is wrong in the 
school-room; select other instances of disorderly 
conduct; question him skilfully, aiming to dis- 
cover reasons he could bring against it. You will 
find he knows quite well what is right, but in 
common with many older folks fails to do right. 
Let the teacher assume her function self-suffi- 
cient, not needing justification, giving the pupil 
no right to an explanation. The school is good; 
the pupil must assume that. The teacher gives 
only right commands; he must assume that. To 
allow a pupil to question either is to strike a blow 
at the very foundation of school discipline. 

Appealing to a boy's sense of duty and sense 
of honor is often useless. Those most in need of 
it are as a rule those least affected by it. Boys 
loving honor and revering duty give a teacher 
no trouble; and in a different sense there is that 
American "schoolboy honor" whose chief pride 
lies in shielding culprits. In the strict sense ap- 
pealing to honor and duty is appealing to motives 
yet unborn. 

17 



The few vicious and turbulent spirits in a 
class that look upon school as a prison, upon the 
teacher as a tyrant, view an appeal to honor and 
duty as a confession of weakness. In so far as it 
partakes of the nature of reasoning it is open to 
all the objections stated above. 

Love and kindness are not cure-alls. When in- 
judiciously used, when bestowed on the unde- 
serving, their effects are decidedly bad. Need I 
mention teachers that have failed because they 
were too kind, too loving, too good-natured? 
Love and kindness are more or less relative terms; 
what is kindness to one may not be to another. 
Frank appreciates his teacher more because kind; 
John views kindness as a sign of weakness, a 
bribe almost, and he takes advantage of the 
teacher. Forgiveness may come too easy and be 
unjust; and often the disapproval of the teacher 
amounts to nothing because John respects not 
the teacher and values not her approval. When 
the teacher's authority is absolute and unques- 
tioned, then love and kindness become valuable, 
additional methods; but while children remain 
selfish and narrow and fail in duty, so long will 
love and kindness carry with them no guarantee 
against imposition. Not love and kindness, but 
respect for authority and fear of the consequences 
keep children in order the first days they go to 
their new teacher. Well and good if she can 
maintain that order; but let the strangeness wear 
off and "familiarity breed contempt," she may as 
well bid good-bye to those first few pleasant days 
of the new term. Have you never heard it said, 

18 



''Miss So-and-So is a successful teacher; she has 
good order; she gets it by love and kindness"? 

But does she get it first by love and kindness? 
Does she not realize her authority of paramount 
importance in back of it all? Will she not become 
more distant and dignified if her authority be in 
danger, and uphold it and preserve it at the ex- 
pense of her kindness ? 

A teacher may be kind and dignified too. The 
pupil may always feel the act coming as from a 
superior. In these democratic days we are prone 
to let down the bars between unequals and suffer 
the consequences. What is a kind teacher? Is 
it one that gives presents or pets the pupils? Or 
just one that is not harsh? Such kindness is not 
positive, but negative or neutral, meaning sim- 
ply absence of cruelty. Is the kind teacher one 
that gives encouragement to all? Surely not; for 
stated thus abstractly she must encourage the 
bad and undeserving as well as the good. Indis- 
criminate kindness and encouragement are injus- 
tices. Not any inherent virtue in kindness per se, 
but the self-evident justice in encouraging the 
deserving makes our acts worthy. 

Just as kindness in the teacher may mean ab- 
sence of cruelty, so may goodness in a pupil mean 
only absence of badness. The good boy is often 
a passive one; the bad often active. He that re- 
frains from disorder is good, whatever be his 
motives; he that commits disorder is bad, what- 
ever be his motives. The activity of the bad boy 
makes him prominent and his example is more 
impressive than that of the good boy who is un- 

19 



obtrusive. Time and time again have I heard a 
boy try to excuse his own misconduct by appeal- 
ing to the bad behavior of some one whose exam- 
ple he followed; never have I heard a boy con- 
demn his own misconduct by comparing it with 
the good conduct of a better boy whose example 
he should have followed. So great is the self- 
righteousness of the American child! "Two 
wrongs make a right" is the fundamental princi- 
ple of the moral arithmetic of the angelic (?) 
pupil, and sometimes of his parents also. 

To be more specific, the bad boy is to the good 
as positive malevolence to "negative benefi- 
cence," the former expressing itself in active ag- 
gressions disregarding the rights of others, the 
latter in passive non-participation in aggressions 
rather than in positive measures helping to se- 
cure greater respect for the rights of others. 

"Secure order by having interesting lessons." 
Interest is not a cure-all. Pupils may become so 
interested as to create disorder by jumping out 
of their seats, jostling each other and by talking 
about the interesting lesson make it difficult for 
the teacher to restore order and continue her 
work. Interest is relative. All can not be equally 
interested. Not only so, but there are cases in 
which it is the order that makes the lesson inter- 
esting and not the reverse. A lesson not interest- 
ing when the class is disorderly often becomes 
interesting when order is restored. Why? Per- 
haps because the principal comes into the room. 
Pupils brighten up, answer the questions asked, 
attend earnestly to the lesson which would have 

20 



been just as interesting in the absence of the prin- 
cipal had they been orderly. No change in the 
teacher or her methods, but fear of the constituted 
authority producing order, made interest pos- 
sible. This same truth underlies the maxim. 
"We must have order or we cannot teach." 

Interest really the means to an end has 
tended to become the end itself. It has its limits. 
If what is interesting is good, then what is most 
interesting is most good. Determining our 
course of study accordingly, for the boys we 
might introduce blood and thunder tales of the 
wild and woolly West; for the girls love stories, 
the fashions and other vanities of femininity; for 
both, the comic pages of our Sunday journals, 
stories of the knight and his lady fair and the 
court intrigues of the Middle Ages. In addition 
to this entertaining material ,the boys might be 
given a course in practical pugilism supplemented 
by study of the lives of great prize-fighters from 
Heenan and Savers to Corbett and Jeffries. How 
interesting! But sufficiently absurd to bid us 
pause. Yet such absurdity is the legitimate con- 
clusion of a naturalistic view making interest the 
be-all and end-all of school methods. Children 
are interested in many things not good for them. 
The existence of a principle guiding our choice 
of interests demonstrates how thoroughly our 
methods must be subordinated to moral law, to 
the absolute Ought determining our needs as 
rational beings. 

Teachers are urged to prepare lessons before 
teaching them and have ready materials for work, 

21 



such as books, pencils, paper, etc. This is good 
advice, but of itself it will not secure order, 
though once having order, it tends to reduce the 
chances of disorder to a minimum. It is quite pos- 
sible for a teacher to have order and not be ready 
promptly to distribute materials for work. 
Though the class be idle while she is getting 
ready, yet it is under control. 

On the other hand, a teacher may have a good 
character and possess teaching ability; may be 
kind, loving, patient, quiet, industrious and pro- 
gressive; and yet fail because lacking the spirit 
which makes those methods the expression of her 
personality; or possessing it, yet fail because in- 
efficient punishments make it easy for the vicious 
to scorn her authority. In the midst of profound 
silence an unruly pupil may burst forth like a 
blazing volcano, in an act of disorder completely 
ruining the lesson so well prepared by a teacher 
the latchet of whose shoe he is unworthy to un- 
loose. It is discouraging, yea, even exasperating, 
and worst of all, it is rank injustice. Such a 
teacher is worth too much to be sacrificed for the 
sake of such a pupil or a hundred such. 

"Order is Heaven's first law." "The most 
sacred duty of the teacher," says James L. 
Hughes, "is to maintain good order," and ac- 
cording to the same writer the most important 
reason for keeping order is because it trains 
character. All the more reason, therefore, to 
make disorder as nearly impossible as can be and 
all the more reason to have not only a varied and 
efficient means for encouraging the good, but 

22 



also a varied and efficient system of punishments 
to bring upon the head of the culprit the just 
retribution of his own misconduct and discourage 
the weaknesses of will and perversities of charac- 
ter all too common in American life. 

The next chapter will deal with the nature of 
punishment and with certain specific modes of 
punishment now in vogue. 



23 



CHAPTER V. 
Punishments. 

"We are compelled to say that crime has no 
positive existence except in the particular will of 
the criminal. Here, then, it must be attacked; 
here its denial of right must be contradicted and 
defeated. Such treatment of crime is Punish- 
ment. 

"Punishment is per se just; ... it is in reality 
but the completion or actual and full development 
of his own act considered as an act of will. . . . 
But when the law recoils, in the form of punish- 
ment, on the head of the offender, he is treated in 
accordance with his right: his act is developed to 
its logical consequence, and the offender in re- 
ceiving punishment is really being treated sim- 
ply with the honor due to a presumptively ra- 
ional being. 

"In view of the foregoing results, derived from 
analysis of the nature of crime as proceeding from 
that free-will of man which is the proximate 
source of right, our author finds himself com- 
pelled to comment adversely on various theories 
regarding the nature and ground of punishment 
that are often brought forward. In these theories 
crime is regarded merely as an unfortunate and 
regrettable evil and punishment as another evil 
of like character, to which society must resort in 
order, by frightful example, to deter others from 

24 



committingcrime;or for the maintenance of pub- 
lic safety, the protection of property, the improve- 
ment of the criminal or the like. These theories are 
to be termed superficial rather than abstractly 
false. They are founded on considerations inciden- 
tal to punishment, and which constitute its extrin- 
sic justification, rather than on a perception of its 
intrinsic nature and justification. The consider- 
ations mentioned 'are in their place ... of es- 
sential consequence,' but the theories founded on 
them all tacitly presuppose 'the previous demon- 
stration that punishment is intrinsically just.' ' ; 

Recently in an editorial a newspaper com- 
plained of the prevailing laxity of our times. 
Silly sentimentalism had made criminals heroes. 
Foolish young women had sent sweets and bou- 
quets to convicted murderers. Equally foolish 
parents had daily sacrificed themselves to spoil 
the little angel, the "boss" of the household. Such 
methods are grounded in naturalistic theory, so 
prevalent during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries. Abstract democratic individualism 
with its companions, soulless psychology and 
conscienceless morality, has had its legitimate 
fruits in social depravity. School punishments 
have not escaped its influence. Laxity has put 
a premium on human weaknesses; indulgence 
has cheapened character; overvaluation of child- 
hood has been undervaluation of manhood and 
womanhood. 

Fear as a motive to good conduct has been al- 
most wholly banished from the school. It is bru- 
tal; characteristic of savagery; fright distracts; 

25 



and so the plaint runs on. If fear be the cause of 
brutality, the trolley car is the cause of civiliza- 
tion and the cart the cause of the horse. Savagery 
is not altogether bad; civilized people have much 
to learn. The doctrine of evolution, its corollary 
the culture epoch theory, in brief the whole his- 
torical standpoint emphasize the lesson we can 
learn from primitive man. The child is the sav- 
age in little. Between the character of a people 
and the nature of their government a definite re- 
lation exists, says John Stuart Mill. Absolute 
democracy will not work in an American school- 
room; absolute monarchy is far better. Children 
need it; it is the better means to our end. Such 
is the lesson history teaches. 

"Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; 
but the rod of correction shall drive it far from 
him." 

Doubtless, there may be too much whipping. 
It was a fault of the school of ye olden time. 
Nearly every breach of discipline and even failure 
in lessons was punished by flogging. We have 
gone to the other extreme and abolished it. 
Wisely? Let us see. Just as differences of char- 
acter exist among different tribes of primitive 
men, just so may we roughly classify the pupils 
in the school-room. The few good boys behave 
under any teacher; the indifferent "smile as the 
wind sits"; the positively bad boys, few though 
they be, are enough to keep the teacher's blood at 
the boiling point and keep her from using gentle 
methods with the other boys. Responsibility for 
all is on the teacher's shoulders. To control 

26 



those most in need of it, she must use moral sua- 
sion, the very method least likely to prove effec- 
tive with those whom science shows to be most 
in need of methods more suitable to wild, savage 
and vicious natures. If the older folks erred in 
their indiscriminate use of whipping, so have the 
newer in their indiscriminate rejection of it. 

In the history of man conscious recognition of 
the moral law has been comparatively late in 
making its appearance as the guide to righteous- 
ness; therefore as a rule it is comparatively late 
in making its appearance in the history of the 
individual. This truth of evolution proves the 
error of moral suasion. Thus, too, as William T. 
Harris shows, the child is nearest to nature; his 
mind is "immediate (or potential)"; physical im- 
pulses predominate; pains and pleasures are rul- 
ing motives; muscular prowess is his ideal. Not 
only such considerations, but facts drawn from 
the history of education, lead Rosenkranz to 
recommend corporal punishment for young chil- 
dren. Strange indeed it is that a method so 
nearly universal as corporal punishment should 
have its historical importance entirely over- 
looked! "In philosophy, all that is new was once 
old; and all that was old in time assumes new 
phases." It becomes our duty to discover the 
new phase of corporal punishment suited to our 
time. 

A few determined bad pupils can make a 
teacher's life a burden. Why not have corporal 
punishment for them? "Ah," says one, "you will 
degrade them." "The teacher," says another, 

27 



"will abuse the privilege." Nevertheless, more 
than one teacher has been degraded by the dis- 
respect of authority shown by pupils that have 
abused their liberties in the absence of punish- 
ments adequate to restrain them. Choose be- 
tween pupil and teacher. Which shall be de- 
graded? Which upheld? Which abuse is the 
worse? Which more likely to happen? 

A pupil as faithful to his duty as the teacher 
is to hers will not need a whipping. Nearly every 
class has its degenerates. From their dis- 
obedience in the first instance spring the disorder 
for which the teacher is held responsible. Quell 
that disorder. Stern measures are needed, espe- 
cially when disobedience is willful. Give a teacher 
the means, a variety of punishments. Then if she 
fail, it will not be because of lack of means to 
uphold her authority. That excuse would be 
dead. 

Not only has there been the anomaly of com- 
pulsory education without compulsory obedi- 
ence and without compulsory accommoda- 
tions, but, with the raising of the standard for 
the teacher and the increase in her responsibil- 
ities, there has also come a decrease in her au- 
thority. Over-worry not over-work becomes the 
bane of teaching. External means for maintain- 
ing order have been reduced and those remaining 
in many cases are worthless by reason of pre- 
vailing social conditions. The chief burden is 
thereby thrown on the mind of the teacher. I 



ask not "Is this condition expedient, wise, ad- 
visable?" but first and fundamentally, "Is it just? 
Is it right?" 

Corporal punishment has been abolished in 
Philadelphia. But at what a cost! Study it out 
and it becomes appalling. Nervous prostration 
and other ills, with resulting doctor's bills; the 
injury to the teacher's disposition and reputation; 
the damage done to the good name of the school ; 
waste of school supplies and destruction of school 
property; sacrifice of lessons and the injustice 
done to better pupils; friction with parents, and 
worst of all, the weakening of character — all these 
may grow out of the first acts of disorder that the 
teacher can not check at once for the lack of 
adequate and varied means to nip in the bud. 
Must a teacher put up with an unruly pupil? Has 
she the privilege of putting him out of the room? 
Not always ; sometimes she is told to try to keep 
him in until lessons are over before disciplining 
him. Meanwhile the damage is being done; the 
teacher's authority seems to lessen just in pro- 
portion to the number of commands she gives to 
such unruly pupils. Where the disorder is delib- 
erate, aimed to annoy the teacher, the pupil gains 
his point. A few such pupils have the teacher 
at their mercy. The lessons are broken up. Or- 
der becomes possible only at the expense of the 
lessons. They must be neglected; order requires 
all the teacher's attention. W'ho pays the piper? 

Once upon a time a boy in school was guilty 
of an act of very low vulgarity. He was instantly 
sent home. After the parents had appealed to 



one of the authorities, the teacher received a note 
from the same telling him to remember "he was 
a boy once himself." This is no fairy story, e'en 
though it starts like one. 

"Honor thy father and thy mother." Has this 
Commandment outlived its usefulness? If the 
shameless acts of ill-breeding so noticeable in 
some of our boys and girls are marks of honor, 
I do not care to have any, at least, of that kind. 
Inborn brazen audacity and perversity are inten- 
sified by the license permitted under lax condi- 
tions. "Cultivate a boy's good qualities; devote 
all your attention to them and his bad ones will 
die of starvation." Will they? Easier said than 
done, for the claim ignores conditions outside of 
school life that continually feed and develop the 
bad. Read the fable of the farmer and the fox, 
and learn. 

A boy whose misconduct degrades the teacher 
should be given a dose of his own medicine. 
Does he like to fight and bully ? Whip him then; 
it's better than a lecture. Can he not keep his 
hands off other boys and their property? Tie his 
hands and confiscate some of his own property. 
It's better than moral suasion. Does he jump 
out of his seat? Strap him down or let him stand 
up out of the way as long as the teacher remains 
standing. He'll be glad enough to stay in his 
seat next day. As acts of disorder are closely 
connected, going from bad to worse, it is essen- 
tial to squelch them on their first appearance, 
giving them no time to influence others by bad 
example. 

30 



Philadelphia has no corporal punishment and 
that at a time when by very contrast it would be 
most effective. Means of getting pleasure and of 
avoiding and allaying pain have multiplied; pain 
becomes looked upon as an absolute evil; chil- 
dren's crying as a sign of pain must be stopped 
at all costs; so children become pampered and 
flattered until swelled heads become epidemic. 
Counter irritation by means of the rod would re- 
duce the swelling. Opponents of the rod miss its 
historic meaning. The Church, the State and 
the School are founded on authority. That au- 
thority will remain rock-bottom,, absolutely es- 
sential until people outgrow or outlive the need 
of it. Visible signs — religious ceremonies, the 
policeman and his club, the pedagogue and his 
birch — are authority made manifest. More espe- 
cially do these signs appeal to children and to 
others in the symbolic stage of thinking. The 
rod hanging over the teacher's blackboard and 
the teacher's privilege of using it confer respect 
by virtue of the hidden meaning. A burly ruffian 
attempted to strike the little sheriff bent on ar- 
resting him. "When you strike me, you strike 
the whole State of Massachusetts!" exclaimed 
the doughty officer, whereupon the ruffian col- 
lapsed. Authority objectified in the principal 
commands respect even of a disorderly class. 
Even though whipping may be given only by a 
person selected, yet the rod in each teacher's 
room as the symbol of authority would have an 
unconscious influence for good. 

3i 



"Had I been whipped more when a boy, I 
would be a better man now. Had my parents 
overcome my willfulness, my position in the 
world would now be better." Have you never 
heard such testimony? Fear yet has its uses. 
Two cases now in mind bear me out. The father 
is feared, respected and obeyed; seldom whips 
and never apologizes for it; the mother is loved 
the more, but disrespected and disobeyed; whips 
often, and apologizes for it afterward. In another 
case the father is easy and has no control over the 
child ; but the mother demands, requires and gets 
obedience. Whatever be the theory, facts such 
as these should be interpreted, not ignored. 

Each teacher has a program for the day's work. 
Allowing an hour for assembly, recesses and dis- 
missals, four hours are left for actual teaching of 
branches acquired. This is the main, positive 
work of the teacher, her direct, immediate pur- 
pose. Whatever be the end in view — moral char- 
acter, mind-training or imparting knowledge — 
whatever be the passive conditions — order, au- 
thority or the state of society — nevertheless the 
chief active work of the teacher is to teach les- 
sons laid down in the program. Moral character 
can not be taught ; it is partly a resultant of teach- 
ing; it is the justification for education; it is the 
ultimate end, education being one of the means. 
Just as that end is more likely to be attained by 
giving a maximum amount of time to actual 
teaching of lessons, just so can that maximum be 
best attained when its negative condition — order 
— is guaranteed and made as nearly inviolate as 

32 



possible. School programs rest on that idea; no 
time is given for keeping order. Order is as- 
sumed all the time. Such is the ideal. Really, 
it is often interfered with and broken up. Lax 
methods of punishment do not discourage inter- 
ferences. As far as possible acts of disorder 
should be settled in school and settled at once. Why ? 
"Have we not suspension for unruly pupils?" 
True; but its worth depends on fear of parents, 
their ability ito control the child, the power of 
social condemnation, the difficulty of getting the 
pupil back, and the nature of the pupil himself. 
Not one of these can be trusted. Some parents 
have no control over their children. " Parents 
are not good enough," says Herbert Spencer. 
Many lack the education needed to "train up a 
child in the way he should go." Business inter- 
ests interfere with others. More still have no 
knowledge of educational literature and know lit- 
tle of the thousand and one trials thwarting the 
teacher's purposes. Yet such folk will dic- 
tate to a principal the way to run a school. How 
devoutly I have wished they could try it for a 
month! Not knowing the parent beforehand, 
one cannot tell whether suspension will be good 
or bad. Have you never seen a parent more un- 
ruly than the child? When defended in wrong- 
doing, the pupil returns as bad as ever and often 
worse. What think you of a parent suggesting 
a very hot place as the fitting abode for a teacher? 
The more fractious pupils view the school in a 
wrong light. Among them a suspended boy be- 
comes more or less of a hero; the halo of notoriety 

33 



delights him. He even enjoys being at liberty 
to run the streets during his suspension and per- 
haps expresses a willingness to risk another dose 
of that pleasant medicine. Moreover, the great 
world has its attractions and a desire to leave 
school is engendered. Suspension of some boys 
is but a means to realizing that desire. "I'll put 
you to work, if you are again suspended," threat- 
ens an angry parent, whereupon the heart of the 
young hopeful (or rather hopeless) leaps for joy. 

Suspension is not made public and parents are 
thereby saved from the shame which publicity 
would cause. Publicity, too, could not shame a 
person of low character associating with birds of 
the same feather, because they blame the school 
and the teacher rather than themselves. The only 
public opinion such folk care for does not con- 
demn them. However, purely external consider- 
ations may make suspension of some value in 
hard cases. The parent, while upholding the 
child, yet hates to visit the school for various 
personal reasons not difficult to discover. Some 
pains may be taken, therefore, to avoid a repeti- 
tion. 

Teachers are advised to use suspension only 
as a last resort. Why? It is looked upon as a 
reflection upon the teacher, evidence showing 
inability to control the pupil. His absence de- 
creases the percentage of attendance, for which 
the teacher is held responsible. The school suf- 
fers. Principals feel the resulting dishonor. 
Friction with parents is unpleasant; valuable time 
is lost. A pretty dilemma, forsooth! If the child 

34 



is suspended, the school loses prestige; if not sus- 
pended, he is a living menace to teacher and 
classmates. 

Used too often, suspension loses much of its 
good effects. The pupil soon "learns the ropes" ; 
getting back is easy. Its moral influence weakens 
as it becomes indiscriminate. Considered per- 
haps the most severe punishment except final ex- 
pulsion, at times it degenerates into a cure-all 
that cures little. Its frequency cheapens it; its 
severity lessens by repetition; its intensity dimin- 
ishes as more and more offences are made pun- 
ishable by it. No agreement exists as to what 
misconduct merits suspension. In the face of so 
many adverse social conditions, we cherish it 
still — almost the only remnant of the authority 
that secures unity to school life. Forlorn hope! 
Removing power from the school, placing the 
culprit beyond its jurisdiction, throwing him 
upon a sympathetic environment, leaving punish- 
ment to the whims of parents, it loses its terror, 
it dribbles away its value as an example to others, 
it undermines the authority it aims to support. 
Too much time intervenes between the offence 
and the punishment; the effects are not visible to 
others; even when punishment is inflicted at 
home, the wrong-doer may deny it in the presence 
of his classmates, who have no proof to the con- 
trary. Strange! Backed up by a psychology 
emphasizing correlation of activities, teachers 
in presenting lessons are urged to reinforce oral 
teaching* by pictures or diagrams appealing to 
the eye, by objects and materials appealing to 

35 



touch, yet in inflicting punishments, that same 
psychological principle is conspicuous by its ab- 
sence. 

"A knife that won't cut is not much of a knife; 
a class that won't class is not much of a class 
and a member that won't member is not much 
of a member," said a bright young Ph.D. Under 
these forcible words is hidden a vital criticism ex- 
posing the fundamental fallacy of present-day 
practices — attempting to manage an essentially 
socialistic institution on an individualistic basis. 
Individualistic theory and practice growing out 
of the impulses culminating in the French Revo- 
lution were and are professedly a contradiction 
of the State, whose authority in the School is 
manifested by demanding respect for law and 
subordination of individual inclinations to the 
general welfare of the class. The School has sur- 
vived not because of individualism but in spite 
of it, and individualism can be of value only 
when justified by the moral purpose implied in 
the history of education — only when it has its 
final ground, its reason for being in that which 
it is not — only when it ceases to be individualism 
as such. 

Suspension has value as an act of authority 
implying the right to exclude an individual that 
does not conform to the school standard and 
denying to that individual the right to an educa- 
tion whenever that individual by his act violates 
the conditions that validate the right to an edu- 
cation for himself and others. The right of an in- 
dividual to an education is thus not absolute but 

36 



conditioned upon the security and integrity of 
that right universalized. When a turbulent pupil 
by his behavior robs others of the right to an 
education, he thereby denies it to himself and his 
act of self-alienation should bring retribution 
upon his own head. 

Detaining pupils after school has its value, too. 
as an act of authority. Essentially grounded in 
justice, a restriction on liberty for the violation 
of law, it is none the less ineffective as a deter- 
rent or reformatory measure. Ten or twenty 
minutes detention is scarcely proportionate to 
the evil resulting from even minor acts of mis- 
conduct. Usually the same boys continually 
need the detention; they become more or less 
hardened to it. It is open to abuse by becoming 
indiscriminate. At times it punishes the teacher 
more than the pupils. Laxity is encouraged if 
the teacher does not watch pupils detained and 
the punishment becomes almost worthless. 
Watching is not altogether a pleasant duty; the 
time could be better spent. Under individual- 
istic ideas, class detentions are utterly wrong and 
good pupils often feel unfairly treated, discourag- 
ing their good conduct. Yet under a social sys- 
tem with social responsibility recognized, class 
detentions are thoroughly right; they imply crit- 
icism of the passivity of the good pupil in his fail- 
ure to defend his rights by passing merited con- 
demnation on evil-doess and by shaming them 
into a better frame of mind on the playground 
and elsewhere, neither associating with them nor 
encouraging misconduct. Laughter on the part 

37 



of good pupils, makes the bad more eager to 
create "fun," so cruel to the teacher. Verily, 
many a teacher is like charity; she "suffereth long 
and is kind." Not long ago three young men 
were going to night school evidently bent on in- 
sulting the teacher. Said one, "If she brings me 
up to apologize, I'll tell her to go to Iceland." 
Would detention meet such a case as that? A 
proper class spirit would make that kind of be- 
havior impossible. 

In full swing with prevailing theory, we hear it 
said, "A noisy class is caused by a noisy teacher; 
a quiet teacher makes a quiet class." Substitute 
teachers are living contradictions of that dog- 
ma. Did you never note the rejoicing of a class 
of twelve-year-olds upon hearing of the absence 
of the regular teacher? The noise of the class in 
such a case often begins on the playground and in 
the room ere the substitute has a chance to say 
a word, noisy or quiet. Mere quietness of the 
teacher is no guarantee of a quiet class. If one 
be not convinced of the existence of that spirit 
which views restraint as an evil and the teacher 
as a lawful prey, let him associate not merely 
with children, but with "old" boys; let him hear 
their loud guffaws at the pranks played upon 
their teachers and professors; let him read class 
records describing mean actions positively in- 
sulting to the older men that should have been 
respected. If he be not convinced, then he is 
scarcely open to conviction. 



38 



CHAPTER VI. 

How? 

Realize thoroughly the falsity of naturalism. 
Give no theoretical or practical sanction to wrong 
motives. Give wickedness no chance, give it no 
right to a chance; failing that, as little chance as 
posible. Grant a pupil no right to be interested in 
doing evil, no right to torment teacher or class- 
mates. Revive the conception of the school as a 
social organism. Clearly unfold its meaning. 
Mark off sharply the rights, duties and functions 
of pupils, parents, teachers and authorities. For- 
sake that misleading abstraction "the child" and 
get nearer to the real, living, concrete child with 
which we have to deal — a human being with de- 
sires, feelings, volitions, with passions and weak- 
nesses, but also with a moral law implicit within, 
a universal nature uniting him with the Divine. 
To bring those weaknesses under the sway of 
moral law, to bring order and harmony out of the 
chaos of struggling feelings is the ultimate duty 
of education. Remember then a child is not as a 
lump of clay easy to mold this way or that at the 
mere will of the teacher; nor is the teacher a tire- 
less engine, an everlasting machine, a senseless 
automaton. No; but a real, living human being 
too; yes, with rights and feelings and undertaking 
sacred duties — duties that command respect of 
the thoughtful man the world over; yet she must 

39 



enter the school-room in America and worm her 
way into the good graces of a child, "Yea, curb 
and woo for leave to do him good." Woe unto 
her that fails! 

Meet the shady side of child nature with a va- 
riety of punishments, discriminately used. As 
far as possible guard the teacher against imposi- 
tion. Demand obedience, compel obedience at 
least to the point of non-interference, the indiffer- 
ence point, passing which idleness, inattention 
and indisposition become positive aggressions 
on the rights of others. A pupil that still proves 
unruly under such conditions is out of place in 
a school-room. Put him out and keep him out. 
Experience demonstrates the folly of giving trial 
after trial to one deserving it not. Methods of 
punishment have as their ideal their own aboli- 
tion, aiming to produce a nature no longer in 
need of them. Let that be borne in mind. 

In giving more power and authority to the 
school and to the teacher, less license and fewer 
privileges should be given to pupils. Privileged 
characters usually become a nuisance. Let priv- 
ileges be granted seldom and then only to the 
deserving. When abused, it is always in the 
power of the teacher to recall them, giving pupils 
no right to question her judgment or demand an 
explanation. 

Press, pulpit and school might co-operate to 
raise the standard of intelligence and elevate 
home life. More needful is it for parents to get 
in touch with the institutional life of the school. 
Meetings for parents point the right direction. 

40 



I realize how little time folks have after work is 
done, yet none the less many of them waste 
golden hours talking nonsense, trash, gossip and 
kindred frivolities, that might better be spent in 
learning how to train children. When public 
opinion is wrong, let the school be as firm as 
Gibraltar, against which waves of incompetent 
criticism dash in vain. 

Unity of educational system is demanded by 
our principle. Only with great danger can pri- 
mary school be cut from grammar and grammar 
from high schools. The end and beginning should 
mutually determine each other. Thus grammar 
school practice must be guided not for the bene- 
fit of the pupils leaving at the close of the 
grammar school course, but for the bene- 
fit of those continuing on to the high schools. 
Economic forces trench upon the province of the 
school by drawing pupils away. Catering to 
them, compromising with them, being guided 
by them is utterly vicious, unless those forces be 
ethically right and typical of what must be 
through all eternity. Thus must the ideal social 
state be our aim. 

The plan submitted in this book has many ad- 
vantages. Guided by a moral idealism empha- 
sizing justice, it avoids the dangers of naturalism 
and saves its good qualities. As the school and 
teacher must take so much responsibility, so are 
they given the implied authority commensurate 
with their responsibility, thus enabling the school 
to manage its own affairs, regulate its own disci- 
pline without interference from those who should 

4i 



be given no right to have opinions on subjects 
they have never investigated. The specialization 
of function and division of labor inherent in the 
plan is distinctly an advance in method and in 
line with the progress of economic science. 

Having secured the negative conditions, the 
fundamental requirements of teaching, the pos- 
itive factors may be better developed allowing the 
greatest freedom under law and a better kind 
than before. Engendering respect for law and 
authority, guarding the teacher against impo- 
sition, it saves worry, makes better teaching pos- 
sible, enabling those in power to hold a teacher 
strictly accountable for the condition of the class 
at the end of the term. Something surely would 
be wrong with a teacher failing under such con- 
ditions. 



42 



CHAPTER VII. 
Teachers. 

A wild, noisy, illiterate teacher is a contradic- 
tion in terms. 

Mr. Emerson E. White gives an interesting 
contrast of two classes. In the first, pupils 
"walked heavily on the floor, lounged when re- 
citing, handled books and slates noisily, and 
otherwise kept up a din of poorly concealed dis- 
order. There was, indeed, insubordination in 
their look, voice and bearing." The teacher "was 
earnest and determined, and his pupils seemed 
equally so." In the other class, "pupils glided 
noiselessly from seat to class; the books and 
slates were handled carefully; and a quiet order, 
born of affection and good will, pervaded the 
room." 

Mr. White explains this contrast as follows: 
The teachers "had the same plan of marking, the 
same system of reporting to parents, the same re- 
wards for success in study and conduct, etc. 
There was doubtless some difference in details, 
and even in plans; but the real secret of the 
marked contrast in their success was deeper than 
method or system. It zuas in the teachers. One 
failed because he had not in himself the elements 
of control, and the other succeeded because she 
possessed them." 

43 



"And yet, how many teachers are looking for 
the cause of their failure in discipline in external 
conditions — in school furniture, in patrons and 
home training, in principal or school director, 
etc. — little realizing that there are teachers, wait- 
ing to be called, it may be, who can step into their 
places, and, under the same conditions, easily 
change discord to harmony, and conflict to 
peace." 

The ethical value of Mr. White's "explana- 
tion" depends upon the truth of naturalism which 
has already been shown inadequate. Conditions 
are assumed to be essentially just and right — 
which they are not; whatever they be, it is the 
teacher who must measure up to the conditions 
and not the conditions that must be changed and 
moralized — which ought to be done. Funda- 
mentally, then, the battle rages about what is and 
what ought to be — the real or the ideal. Mr. 
White totally ignores the latter as far as "the 
ought to be" is concerned, for present conditions 
are accepted without criticism as needing no 
change and perhaps eternal. 

In his account Mr. White leaves out many es- 
sential particulars. Does he tell us anything 
against the moral character of the first teacher 
outside of a mere generality? He says nothing to 
indicate the inability of the first to teach. He ac- 
cuses him of no breach of duty. As far as we 
know, the first teacher was not noisy, illiterate 
or ill-tempered. He may even have been kind 
and loving, good-natured and brilliant. No 
charge is brought against him for meanness, bad 

44 



habits or disqualifications of any sort save "he 
had not in himself the elements of control." 

Investigation has discovered peoples whose 
manners, customs and morals seem to us a topsy- 
turvy nightmare. Every-day life discloses to us 
examples showing that "one man's meat is an- 
other man's poison." So pronounced is this rela- 
tivity that it becomes difficult to lay down an ab- 
solute rule for practical affairs. So entangled are 
the activities entering into civilized life that Mr. 
White's explanation is altogether too simple. 
Recognizing as he does farther on in his book 
how external methods may stimulate the activity 
of children for good, he fails to see the darker 
side of the picture. Thus he underestimates the 
influence of external conditions for bad and 
makes no allowance for the relativity of "elements 
of control" to the conditions under which the 
control is exercised. "Elements of control" 
needed to-day may not be those needed 
in the past or those needed in the fu- 
ture. A static view, ignoring the past, making 
no provision for the future, overlooking the eth- 
ical ideals of justice and righteousness, is defi- 
cient historically, unprogressive and utterly per- 
verted. 

"For in the isolated consciousness of the finite, 
whether it be of ourselves as finite, or of any other 
object, we are estranged from ourselves, blind to 
our own real nature, and unconscious of that 
which yet we imply in every word we say and 
every action which we do. We are, above 
all, in want of a Socrates to call our attention to 

45 



the universal basis of our existence, and to force 
us to understand ourselves.'' 

What is implied in the act of teaching, in the 
child 5 s act of going to school, in the child's dis- 
obedience, in the teacher's efforts in discipline? 
Does Mr. White read any meaning into the dis- 
orderly conduct of the first class, except to blame 
it on the teacher? Did he take the trouble to find 
out whether or not any of the pupils entered that 
class determined to have "fun" with the teacher? 
Suppose the teacher went in with lessons pre- 
pared, ready to do his duty. Suppose every pupil 
did the same. Would disorder have followed? 
Where, when and by whom was the first breach of 
duty committed? Mr. White does not say. That 
view which blames all on the teacher, that which 
blames all on the pupil, that which blames all on 
external conditions are alike false and alike true 
— in part only. 

Nor is it certain "that there are teachers wait- 
ing to be called, it may be, who can step into their 
places, and, under the same conditions, easily 
change discord to harmony." The ease may be 
more seeming than real. It is hard to fancy a 
teacher that "easily" can do those things, unless 
with exceptional pupils. To the outside observer 
no strain may be apparent, but ask that teacher 
at the end of the day whether there was not a 
strain due to being continually alert, eyes and 
ears ready to detect mischief. For certain, in a 
large city it is an exceptional class that does not 
put some such strain upon a teacher's mind. 
Much of it is unjust; it requires the teacher to 

46 



meet out of her subjective resources conditions 
she had nothing to do in creating; forces and fac- 
tors rooted in the past ere she was born. Sup- 
pose in the teacher's life no Saturday, Sunday or 
holidays intervened; how many of them could 
stand the strain? 

"The vital factor in a school is the teacher." 
Yes; and for that reason she should be protected 
from the injustices yet inherent in the struggle 
for existence. Then with righteousness can the 
misfits be weeded out. 

Mr. White's "contrast" and "explanation" are 
scarcely fundamental, scarcely large enough to 
be typical of all cases of failing teachers. 

"Study the individual child so as to better 
adapt your methods of teaching and discipline." 
Very good advice; but it has its limits. With 
all the other things recommended to teachers, 
remember that the teacher has the child at most 
but a few years, not geologic epochs. What with 
her day's work, preparation for future lessons, 
reading up educational literature, perhaps belong- 
ing to societies, attending meetings and lectures, 
she has hands and mind quite full. What shall we 
think of a principal advising his teachers to study 
up at home methods for getting at unruly pupils? 
Must she take the school home with her? Must 
she be all teacher? Is there no time she can call 
her own, except during sleep and perhaps not 
always that? Must she twist and stretch school 
methods this way and that, and worry and plan 
to make them fit the exceptional or bad pupils? 
That is one kind of child study. Under it all is 

47 



the great question already suggested: How far 
must the school standard be lowered to level 
down to the bad pupil? How far must the pupil, 
whoever he be, be made to level up to the school 
standard? Choose. 

Moreover, not much value is likely to be de- 
rived from studying the child in isolation from 
the multitudinous influences of heredity and en- 
vironment. To get facts most helpful to us in 
managing the bad boy would often require 
methods likely to be deemed inquisitorial in a 
free country. That democratic liberty of asso- 
ciating with all kinds of folks is far from being 
wholly good in its effects on the character of the 
pupil. Cut off from these associations, studied 
empirically like a chemical compound, child- 
study gives little better than an "inventory of the 
facts of mind." The real ethical value of such 
facts is lost, unless they be interpreted in the light 
of a rational historical development The ideal 
meaning they have for us as moral beings must 
be the essential basis and clearly conceived pur- 
pose of our investigations. 

"Current psychology, especially of the 'syn- 
thetic' sort has erred and strayed from the way, 
beyond anything possible to lost sheep, because 
of the unclear or inadmissible metaphysical no- 
tions with which it operates. We have, first, 
an attempt to construe the mental life in terms of 
mechanism or of the lower categories. This has 
led to the most extraordinary mythology, in 
which mental states are hypostasized, impossible 

48 



dynamic relations feigned, logical identities mis- 
taken for objective temporal identities; and then 
the entire fiction, which exists only in and 
through thought, is mistaken for the generator 
of thought. Here again nothing but criticism 
can aid us. We must inquire what our 'synthe- 
sis' is to mean, and what are the factors which are 
to be 'synthesized,' and what are the logical con- 
ditions of such a synthesis. This inquiry can not 
be dispensed with by issuing cards of questions 
to nurses and young mothers, or by re-discover- 
ing world-old items of knowledge by the easy 
process of constructing new names for them. 
The dictionary may be enriched in this way, and 
charming stories gathered concerning the age 
at which 'our little one began to take notice,' but 
this journalistic method is more likely to con- 
tribute to the 'gayety of nations' than to psycho- 
logical insight." 

None the less, child-study is valuable to the 
teacher if she know how to interpret the results. 



49 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Various School Offences. 

Teacher (during a lesson) — "Johnny, put down 
your hand." Hand goes down. 

Teacher (at dismissal) — "Now, Johnny, what 
is it you wanted to say?" 

Johnny — "Please, ma'am, I saw a tramp in the 
hall walk away with your gold-handled um- 
brella." 

What a wealth of practical pedagogy is hidden 
under that simple incident! Just as in a previous 
chapter, order was shown to be the general con- 
dition assumed, teaching the lessons the chief 
active, particular work of the teacher, just so the 
integrity of the lesson and the continuity of atten- 
tion becomes the immediate purpose to be real- 
ized. Preserve them, minimize interruptions, 
economize time. The teacher lost her umbrella, 
but she followed a sound pedagogic rule. 

One can imagine a class in which pupils are 
allowed to talk to each other at certain times, 
and when commanded by the teacher, they stop 
at once. But would it work well? Scarcely; for 
it is quite likely to violate the rule just laid down. 
Once grant pupils such a right, where will it end? 
Would they talk only about lessons? Baseball 
and football games are more interesting; so are 
personalities. Are they to talk to teach each 

50 



other. If so, are they fit for that work? I doubt 
it. "Give him an inch, he'll take an ell." 

Wise are they who forbid talking. One of the 
most dangerous disorders in the school-room, it 
is a tacit violation of authority and contrary to 
the economics of education. It is most insid- 
ious, so seemingly trifling, so easy to do, so hard 
to stop, such a splendid foil for other disorders, 
so provocative of other mischief. Not only 
wearing upon the nerves and dividing the 
teacher's attention, but also breeding disrespect 
in other ways, it makes her task harder than ever. 
Talking and its twin demon, calling out answers 
and complaints, are a formidable pair. Much 
less evil would it be, if evil it be at all, to gag the 
habitual talker for a while at the beginning than 
to risk the evils following some gentler course. 
Standing in direct causal relation to the offence 
and used at once, it more forcibly appeals to un- 
derstanding and imagination than detention or 
other deferred, inconsequent punishment. Cheat- 
ing, quarreling, fighting, meddling, annoying 
monitors and boys sent to the blackboards, are 
often made possible by the habit of talking that 
has fastened itself upon the class like an Old 
Man of the Sea about the neck of Sinbad. Is it 
not bad manners for a child to talk when the 
teacher is talking? Would it be any too severe 
to shame him as he has put indignity upon the 
teacher? A certain class had a number of gum 
chewers. The teacher said nothing, but kept 
them after school; then calling in three other 
teachers, said, "A chewing gum society is being 

5i 



organized. Mary Jones has been elected pres- 
ident because of her skill in chewing. Mary and 
members, give us a specimen of your art. 
Chew!" Each one had to do a share, unpleasant 
as it was. Remarks were made by each teacher 
on the impropriety of chewing, and thoroughly 
shamed, the pupils w r ere given a lesson more ef- 
fective than keeping them in or confiscating their 
gum during school hours. Could any method be 
invented for shaming talkative pupils into si- 
lence? The whole school suffers; other teachers 
receiving the talkative pupils at the end of the 
term feel the burden. Bad enough is the waste of 
time and neglect of lessons consequent on talk- 
ing, but worst of all is the effect on the character 
of the pupil. Take it all in all, occasional down- 
right impudence is less demoralizing than habit- 
ual talking. 

Only one rule will work for getting paper off 
the floor: Each pupil must be responsible for the 
floor under and nearest his desk. The paper 
ought not to be there. He is to pick it up not as 
a punishment, but because the teacher says so 
and for the sake of neatness and cleanliness ; not 
because he has put it there, but just as one would 
clean in front of his home. The teacher can 
brook no reply, such as. "I did not put it there; 
Willie Smith did it." Practically a criticism of 
the teacher's judgment, it allows a pupil the right 
to deny her authority and make a complaint 
against a classmate, as if the teacher were there 
to redress grievances, investigate charges and be a 
servant at the beck of anyone choosing to use her 

53 



for his personal welfare, the class to the contrary 
notwithstanding. Such complaints create hard 
feelings among pupils. Often, too, a pupil de- 
nies putting paper on the floor when he himself 
has done it unwittingly, and one of the most con- 
temptible acts he can do is to sweep it about un- 
der the desks of his neighbors, taking more trou- 
ble than would suffice to pick it all up. 

Missiles of many kinds are often thrown, 
especially when the teacher is at the board or in 
specting work in the class. Opportunities for 
mischief offer. To reduce them, perhaps the 
teacher stands sideways when writing on the 
board and turns frequently, facing the class to 
prevent mischief. Time is lost and the teacher's 
work is less efficient by reason of the divided 
attention and resulting mental strain. This and 
many other disorders could be obviated were 
there a watcher in each room relieving the 
teacher of nearly all the strain of discipline and 
thereby increasing her efficiency as a teacher. No 
doubt there are objections to such a plan; but 
merely in a hypothetical way let me ask, Is there 
not more than one teacher in the United States 
who would willingly pay for the services of such 
a watcher, could she spare the necessary sum? 
Acts of disorder unforeseen, or done behind the 
teacher's back, growing by what they feed on, 
may become so numerous that it is impossible for 
one person to see and punish and eradicate them 
all. 'Then let the teacher face the class all the 
time, never going among the pupils." Ah, but 
then she suffers the loss of board work and indi- 

53 



vidual instruction, and her results fall below the 
mark at the end of the term. It will never do to 
forget how often disturbances are maliciously 
planned to hurt pupils and teacher, or even to 
create laughter enough to be enjoyable to all but 
the teacher. 

A pupil may be wiser in his knowledge of right 
and wrong than we suppose. While he knows 
the purpose of his attending school, the purpose 
of the school, the requirements and some reasons 
therefor, the effects of bad conduct and the ne- 
cessity of punishment, yet in the class he finds it 
hard to forget that he is a chum of 
Frank Brown, friends with John and Harry 
and Will. He does not rise above his 
childhood. This he shows in passing notes, 
using class time for personal purposes, using 
classmates as individuals whose duty it is 
to carry out his wishes. Writing and passing 
notes is contradictory of the fundamental idea of 
the school. The usUal secrecy observed proves the 
child's knowledge of its wrong. He should for- 
get his friends with their immediate personal re- 
lations in his devotion to their higher interests 
as his classmates. That is the ideal. 

To sum up principles: Authority demands obe- 
dience; its economic aspect requires a minimum 
of interruptions ; socially, the individual must be 
subordinated to the class; ethically, duty is the 
supreme law for all. Violations, as such, point 
to punishment as their legitimate development, 
primarily for the sake of justice, secondarily to 
guard the common rights of all which constitute 
the only ground for giving the right to any. Thus 

54 



the pupil's right to an education is not absolute, 
but conditioned upon the foregoing principles. In 
civil and criminal law, abuse of property rights 
may justify confiscation of the property in the 
higher interests of society. Just so may the 
teacher appropriate the property of the pupil. A 
ruler used as a drumstick thereby has its own 
purpose contradicted and the owner may be held 
to have forfeited his right to it. 

The principles just stated throw light on the 
question, How far should a teacher interfere in 
the personal affairs of the pupils? Suppose, for 
instance, Johnny says Frank struck him, what 
shall the teacher do? Investigate it at once? 
No; as teacher it becomes her duty to ignore the 
complaint during the lesson, command order and 
investigate, if at all, after school. From the 
school standpoint both pupils are out of order; 
their actions conflict with the fundamental ideas. 
Cases may be so violent as to demand the sum- 
mary ejection of both plaintiff and defendant 
from the room. To give pupils a right to an im- 
mediate hearing is dangerous. Where can we 
draw the line? How many complaints can be 
recognized? Some one will say, "That is an in- 
justice to the pupil/' Is it? Well, any other plan 
would be unjust to the teacher and to the thirty 
or forty other pupils besides the culprits. More- 
over, the injustice to the individual is but seem- 
ing. It is but the strictest justice to him in con- 
formity with his purpose as a pupil to deny him 
the right to an immediate investigation of his 
complaint during a lesson. 

55 



Contrast these two plans : 

A. During lessons a pupil has the right to 
make a complaint and have an investigation 
thereof. 

B. No such right should be given to any pu- 

P ii. 

What follows from the first plan? 

1. The pupil subverts his own function and 
purpose as a pupil. 

2. He has the right to break in upon the les- 
sons at any time, upon a trumped-up charge 
even. 

3. The class becomes of less importance than 
the individual. 

4. It gives a pupil power over the teacher, who 
must be at his service for personal reasons, as a 
judge or arbitrator, and lowers her dignity and 
lessens her authority. Her purpose as a teacher 
is thus trenched upon. 

5. During the investigation, what are the other 
pupils doing? 

6. It virtually puts the lessons at the mercy 
of the pupil who may choose not to have them 
and use a complaint to gain his point. 

7. The bad habit generated weakens the pu- 
pil's character. He becomes more at the mercy 
of classmates who tease him for the purpose of 
hearing him cry out. Adversity easily daunts 
him. Self-control for better purposes lessens. 

8. Carrying this analysis to its conclusion, it 
finally gives the pupils the right to utterly destroy 
the school system. 

What will the second plan do? 

56 



1. In general it avoids the dangers of the first. 

2. It stimulates self-control and strengthens 
character. 

3. It is in complete harmony with the princi- 
ples shown to be at the basis of education. 

Enough has been said to show the method of 
viewing and treating school offences. In order 
to emphasize their almost infinite variety, let me 
specify a few besides those already mentioned. 
Many ways of teasing classmates — pulling their 
hair, sticking pins in them, caricaturing them, 
calling names, etc. — rolling marbles, kicking and 
dropping objects on the floor, stamping, hum- 
ming, cat-calls, whistling, throwing ink, disfig- 
uring desks, walls, boards, books, misusing pen- 
cils, rulers and other supplies, attracting the at- 
tention of classmates by various devices, laziness 
or disobedience showing itself in badly executed 
drawings, reading novels or other inappropriate 
material — all these offences may happen in a sin- 
gle day, in the same room, and several may be 
committed by the same pupil. For this variety 
of disorders have we a commensurate variety of 
punishment? Is it just to blame the teacher for 
it all; is she really the cause of it; is she morally 
responsible? 

In view of what has been said, what kind of ad- 
vice should be given to teachers? 

The teacher's dignity and authority are of su 
preme importance, absolutely essential. In or- 
der to better secure them the following sugges- 
tions are offered: 

57 



Allow no familiarity. Let there be few privi- 
leged characters, such as monitors, the fewer the 
better. Keep each one as strictly as possible in 
his place; give him no right to go into the supply 
closets or meddle with the articles on your desk. 
Avoid lowering yourself to their level by saying 
"smart" things, creating laughter, and putting 
yourself under obligation to them. A pupil is a 
pupil, inferior; the teacher is teacher, superior; 
he is not to speak to you without per- 
mission. Allow no calling out, no talking, 
no changing of seats without permission — 
no criticism of your methods, whether implicit or 
explicit. Interest yourself seldom in pupils' per- 
sonal affairs, games, sports, quarrels and the like. 
Allow no contradiction of what you say. Squelch 
it at once. Much of a teacher's power comes 
from keeping up her dignity; always appearing 
to have reserve force, keeping each person at his 
distance, her authority becomes feared and re- 
spected partly by reason of its inscrutableness 
to the pupils. That view which identifies fear of 
authority with frightening a pupil out of his wits 
is too absurd to need criticism. 

Let the pupil feel his inferiority and he will re- 
spect you. Give very few privileges and those 
only to the most deserving, to those least likely 
to abuse them. Do not argue with a child. Don't 
assume that he has a right to an opinion on a 
subject he has not investigated. Being a child, 
the limitations of his mind prevent him from see- 
ing the question in a broad and impartial survey. 

58 



What you say to him should be as from a supe- 
rior, not from an equal obliged to justify your 
course by an argument. Ask him questions elic- 
iting facts rather than for a description or theory 
defending his misconduct. When a pupil is told 
to get in order, he is to get in order, not give an 
explanation why he got out of order. If he at- 
tempts an explanation, check him at once, espe- 
cially when he tries the "baby" act of cloaking 
his own misconduct under that of another. 

What offences should be overlooked? Taken 
in the abstract, judged by mere size, there are 
many; judged by tendency, habit, character and 
ethical principle, there are few. Unless you wish 
to put a premium on human frailties, overlook 
as few as possible. A mistake on the side of 
strictness is better than a mistake on the side of 
leniency. Consider your position, relations to 
the pupil, and your abilities, and then aim high. 
Especially is a high standard both in work and 
conduct to be put before advanced pupils. A 
pupil after going to school six or seven years 
should be familiar enough with school to know 
what is expected of him. Yet do we not often 
find large pupils as hard to manage as the smaller 
ones? Is it because the older ones, while being 
more nearly rational than younger ones, are also 
more refined in trickery and less awed by author- 
ity? 

Reduce discipline to a minimum; keep teaching 
at a maximum. Clearly understand the purpose 
and importance of a lesson yourself. Select the 
chief points and teach them thoroughly. Give a 

59 



few important reasons; many reasons and illus- 
trations confuse a child, who, as a rule, can not 
discriminate sharply enough to give each its rela- 
tive importance. Seldom allow a child to ask a 
question during a lesson. Only where authority 
is absolute and commands implicitly obeyed, can 
a pupil as a general rule be permitted to question 
the teacher. His questions are often personal, 
beside the point or unimportant to class work; 
they should be deferred until school work is fin- 
ished. 

Economy demands preparation for the day's 
work, not only of lessons, but also of the details 
of management. It would be well for a beginner 
to have upon her desk a paper containing sug- 
gestions to which to refer on entering the room, 
such as: 

Is the room properly ventilated? 

Are ink-wells filled, slates clean, paper and 
pencils ready? 

Have I the necessary books within reach? 

If at recess and dismissal there are a few spare 
moments, have the pupils pick up the paper from 
the floor and put it in the basket as they go out. 
As the pupils come into the room, they are to go 
to their desks, not wander about the room or 
look out the windows. It is well to have them 
occupy spare moments before school with prep- 
aration of lessons. 

"My, my!" some one will exclaim. "What a 
lot of things a teacher must be ready for! What 
an awful mess to remember!" Yes, exactly so; 

60 



and should they read a few more works on edu- 
cation, attend a few lectures, talk with a few prin- 
cipals, the methods, advice and "duties" recom- 
mended become simply bewildering. The few 
points specified herein are insignificant in com- 
parison. 

Will the teacher's mind ever be free from these 
burdens? Certainly not so long as she bears 
them patiently; not so long as present practices 
are viewed as just and right; not so long as the 
functions of discipline and teaching are concen- 
trated in one person with little authority to carry 
them out; not so long as the school is faithless to 
its historic purpose and too much at the mercy 
of the individualizing forces of industrial society. 
To the rescue ! 

One hundred years hence what meaning will 
the historian read into our school life of to-day? 



61 



CHAPTER IX. 
Conclusion. 

"I am whatsoever is — whatsoever has been — 
whatsoever shall be: and the veil which is over 
my countenance no mortal hand has ever raised." 

Man is the child of the past and the parent of 
the future. Rambling now so long in the great 
world, seeking outwardly for the "peace that 
passeth understanding," he has ever failed 
and is beginning to return upon himself to find 
it in the innermost depths of his own soul. He 
has swept the starry heavens with his telescope 
and finds no end; he has looked into the abyss of 
time and finds no end; high and low has he 
sought with all eagerness to find God in the mere 
world outside and has found Him not. Dwarfed 
into insignificance by boundless space, hemmed 
in by a life — "a narrow vale between the cold 
and barren peaks of two eternities" — an atom in 
the universe, a moment in the everlasting, he has 
been appalled, terrified by the awe-inspiring mys- 
teries crowding thick upon him and sees with 
bitterness the wreck of the dearest hopes this 
life held in store for him. Long enough in bond- 
age to the hard fate from which there seemed no 
escape, he is now rising in rebellion against a 
sordid agnosticism, entrenching himself upon the 
impregnable rock — Mind — the Mind which gives 

62 



unity to all. In it do the infinites meet, the eter- 
nities melt. In it history gets its meaning and 
man his destiny. 

Agnostic metaphysics has had fitting company 
in social utilitarianism, hedonistic ethics, individ- 
ualistic economics and soulless, empirical psychol- 
ogy. Voices are raised against them and in no un- 
certain tone demand a return to first principles. In 
speculative philosophy the cry "Back to Kant" 
has echoed and re-echoed along other lines. The 
batteries of rationalism are beginning to rake 
fore and aft with effect. Socialism is growing 
apace. In France, Germany and Belgium it has 
expressed itself in political parties of some im- 
portance. The growing demand for municipal 
ownership; agitation for single tax, for shorter 
hours of work, for higher wages and reforms 
too many to mention are evidences of its spirit. 
Industrial organization, co-operative societies and 
the trusts are important factors in the new move- 
ment. Even millionaires are coming to recog- 
nize a social responsibility in the use of wealth, 
and strangest of all, individualist newspapers, in 
emphasizing it, fail to see their own inconsist- 
ency. Social and economic interpretations 
throw new light upon old facts. Man has a so- 
cial inheritance, a moral inheritance, an economic 
inheritance as well as a physical and individual 
inheritance. The historical method is revealing 
its resources. Kant and Hegel through their dis- 
ciples have been made to speak tolerably plain 
English. Their influences for good have been 
great; their efforts directed against agnosticism 

63 



have been largely successful; their "souls are 
marching on." 

To the outcry against the baneful influences of 
naturalism and agnosticism in these lines, I add 
mine against their influences in school life. 
Looking at man from the dawn of history to the 
sunset of evolution, what a picture of despair they 
paint ! 

"O Priestess in the vaults of Death, 
O sweet and bitter in a breath, 

What whispers from thy lying lips? 
'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run.' ' : 

Gazing with intent eyes and solemn thought 
upon that earth you love so well, upon those 
scenes that met your eyes morn after morn from 
happy childhood's sport to manhood's stern real- 
ities; upon those faces whose image is graven in 
golden lines within your breast; thinking on 
those dearest ties of all wherein are treasured 
the hopes, ideals and aspirations of a sacred life 
whose light has shed a cheering glow along the 
thorny way and planted in your heart the hopes 
of nobler, purer, holier life beyond this earthly 
sphere — it dawns upon you that these bright 
dreams are doomed to utter and inevitable disap- 
pointment. In aeons to come those scenes fade 
away, those faces disappear forever; all have van- 
ished to return no more. The "voiceless dust" 
hath claimed its own. Death reigns supreme. 

The earth in its restless way shall move slower 
and slower; the sun wanes dimmer and dimmer. 
The pulse of life doth cease to beat in distant 
worlds. Slower yet do the planets move; nearer, 

64 



nearer to the sun the worlds approach drawn by 
resistless gravitation, when of a sudden, with 
mighty rush and roar, the whirling globes with 
thunderous crash, ne'er heard by mortal ears, 
do come together, and with growing heat intense, 
the aggregated mass doth swell and swell, diffus- 
ing over greater space a vaporous nebula. 

And all for nothing — cosmic evolutions, a 
swirling, lifeless mass of interacting molecules — 
without a purpose, without a meaning, without a 
God. 

"Are God and Nature then at strife, 
That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life; 



'* 'So careful of the type?' but no. 
From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: 

I care for nothing, all shall go. 

" Thou makest thine appeal to me: 
I bring to life, I bring to death : 
The spirit does but mean the breath : 

I know no more.' And he, shall he, 

"Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 

65 



"Who trusted God was love indeed, 
And love Creation's final law, — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravin, shriek'd against his creed, — 

"Who loved, who suffer' d countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 

Or seal'd within the iron hills? 

"No more? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tear each other in their slime, 

Were mellow music matched with him. 

"O life as futile, then, as frail! 

O for thy voice to soothe and bless! 

What hope of answer, or redress? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil." 

That is the last word of naturalism. 



66 



HERBERT SPENCER'S "EDUCATION/' 

What knowledge is of most worth? is the ques- 
tion discussed by Mr. Spencer in Chapter I. Un- 
less we postulate a static unchanging form of 
society, no absolute answer can be given. The 
worth of knowledge is relative to the needs of 
the people, their surroundings, their historic ori- 
gin and position. Not one of these can be fixed 
a priori and no particular form can be taken as 
the society typical for all eternity. 

' r In order of time, decoration precedes dress" 
(p. 5). Why does it? Why should it? We are 
not told. Cases cited by Mr. Spencer to prove 
his claims are taken chiefly from savage life. 

1. Under such conditions the skin of the sav- 
age serves the purposes of clothing. He is al- 
ready dressed. Exposure to extremes of heat 
and cold has habituated him to it. 2. Travelers 
whose testimony is advanced infer the discomfort 
of the savage because they would be uncomfor- 
table under the same circumstances. The savage 
is not uncomfortable, though the European 
would be. 3. If anything, the savage views dec- 
oration of more worth than what Mr. Spencer 
calls "dress." From the savage's point of view 
Mr. Spencer's implied criticism is of no worth. 
So the savage, if wise enough, could turn Mr. 
Spencer's argument against him, saying, "Do 
without dress, harden yourself as I do. Such 
would be immensely useful in saving time, labor 

67 



and money. You have not shown your idea 
superior to mine." 4. Admit the relativity of 
knowledge and define dress in relation to its pur- 
poses, then in any given tribe, dress precedes 
ornament. 5. Among the Esquimaux does or- 
nament precede dress? Are not the Jews to-day 
more given to decoration than their ancestors 
who lived in Judea in by-gone ages? Is the Ital- 
ian woman of to-day less or more gaudy in dress 
than the Roman matron "in the brave days 
of old"? Are the Greeks to-day less orna- 
mental in dress than when Socrates taught? 
6. The prevalence of a desire for decora- 
tion becomes on Mr. Spencer's theory a 
test of advancement — in inverse ratio. Thus, 
the gorgeous displays of millinery in our centres 
of civilization are really relics of savagery 
brought up to date. 7. Mr. Spencer fails to in- 
corporate the universal demand for ornament 
into a philosophy of aesthetics, thus missing its 
deeper meaning. 8. Is it true of the animal 
kingdom from which man is supposed to have 
descended that decoration precedes dress? If 
not true, why and how did man ever come to re- 
verse the process? 9. The prevalence of orna- 
ment depends on many conditions; but whatever 
they be, on Mr. Spencer's philosophic theory it 
is the fittest to survive and has not outlived its 
usefulness. 

"Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, 
the ornamental comes before the useful. Not 
only in times past, but almost as much in our 



own era, that knowledge which conduces to per- 
sonal well-being has been postponed to that 
which brings applause" (p. 6). It is a long, long 
step from "decoration precedes dress" to the 
"ornamental comes before the useful." No such 
separation and opposition of the ornamental and 
useful can be maintained. The ornamental came 
into existence and persisted only as a useful ad- 
junct in the struggle for life. Nor can Mr. Spen- 
cer's fundamental ethical teaching cast any odium 
on the ornamental, if the ornamental gave pleas- 
ure to the person. Nor can it be admitted as 
stated that "the ornamental comes before the 
useful." Farther on in his book, he places first 
"activities which directly minister to self- 
preservation" as most useful and "knowledge im- 
mediately conducive to self-preservation is of 
primary importance." But if the ornamental so 
overrides the useful, the race would long since 
have been extinct. This puts Mr. Spencer in a di- 
lemma. He would have to give up either his 
theory of the ornamental and its opposition to 
the useful or narrow the meaning of the term 
useful so as to deprive it of its value as a strong 
support to his wide philosophic theory. 

He appeals to history. "In the Greek schools, 
music, poetry, rhetoric and a philosophy which, 
until Socrates taught, had but little bearing upon 
action, were the dominant subjects; while knowl- 
edge aiding the arts of life had a very subordinate 
place" (p. 7). Mr. Spencer is probably trying to 
read into the "arts of life" the meaning given 

69 



them by the nineteenth century. Even an ama- 
teur knows how profoundly the action of the 
Greeks was affected by their schools and how in- 
timately intertwined with and growing out of 
their ideal of life. Nor can we expect otherwise 
if we properly read the meaning of evolution. 
Doubtless in those ancient days as in these mod- 
ern ones, the confusion in the life of the practical 
man arose from not consciously understanding 
himself and acting on a consistent philosophy, or 
rather from acting on all sorts of notions and 
theories without searching for their philosophic 
basis. 

History shows extreme fluctuations in social 
and moral conditions. Whether we view them 
with Spencer as instances of the rhythm of 
motion, or with Hegel as organic development — 
thesis, antithesis, synthesis — yet it remains true 
that the state of knowledge, the advancement of 
learning, or the progress of the sciences, is not 
the determining factor in morality. No neces- 
sary connection exists between knowledge of 
righteousness and doing right. At the dawn of 
the twentieth century, it may be doubted whether 
we with all our vast knowledge are really more 
moral than people in the best periods of Greece 
and Rome or in China or in ancient Israel. Af- 
ter reaching a great and glorious eminence, both 
Greece and Rome fell. Yet at that time their 
knowledge was far superior to that of the heroic 
age. The comparison of American with Athenian 
life, made by Professor Fiske, a disciple of Spen- 
cer, is not altogether favorable to Uncle Sam. 

70 



It still is necessary to guard against the thief, 
for he has grown wiser as well as the honest man. 
In the preface to his "Principles of Ethics" Pro- 
fessor Bowne says, "In the great bulk of duties 
that make up life, men of good will can find their 
way without a moral theory," and he might also 
have added without that knowledge which to-day 
is spoken of as scientific. This may be empha- 
sized by examples taken from Mr. Spencer's 
"Data of Ethics" and "Principles of Sociology"; 
in both are mentioned certain peaceful tribes 
among whom a high order of moral life prevails, 
but certainly not a high order of scientific learn- 
ing. 

Had Mr. Spencer gone more deeply into the 
history of education, he would have found exam- 
ples contradicting his thesis — "the ornamental 
comes before the useful." Even granting it true 
of the schools of Athens, it is false of education 
at Sparta. Education in ancient China, in Persia 
and in Judea disprove that "knowledge aiding 
the arts of life had a very subordinate place." If 
I have read and heard aright, then China should 
be a shining example of Mr. Spencer's utilitarian 
agnosticism in practice. I can not say that I 
have been impressed with the beauty of Chinese 
art; can you? Yet the "arts of life" have re- 
ceived much attention there, even to the point of 
stagnation. Thus far Mr. Spencer's claim merits 
the criticism of Professor Roscher on Carey's 
"Past, Present and Future" — "It is rank with in- 
exact science and unhistorical history." A wide 
survey of life shows clearly that the practices of 

7i 



a people can be understood only in the light of 
their ideal as a family, tribe, city, state or nation ; 
yet many a "practical" man is prone to deny the 
existence of the ideal because he can not hear it 
jingle like the dollars in his pocket or see it dan- 
gle in front of his eyes like a jumping-jack on a 
string. 

It is too much to presume scientific knowledge 
sufficient to satisfy all our needs. I can not see 
how the knowledge that soap is made by the 
chemical action of the natural fats and oils with 
the alkalis is a whit better than the knowledge 
that enables one to read the meaning of a pic- 
ture or of a period of history. If this latter knowl- 
edge be called scientific, the difficulty is not 
solved but simply removed, for instead of a cri- 
terion to decide between the scientific and non- 
scientific, we would need one to decide between 
the claims of the various sciences themselves, for 
their range has been so widened as to include 
what was not before considered scientific. As it 
is, even now such a criterion is needed. Though 
there may be scientific principles according to 
which a picture is painted or a period of history 
interpreted, it is not those principles that consti- 
tute the chief interest of the picture or the period ; 
nor is it the perception of those principles that 
makes its meaning real for us as moral beings. 

"Throughout his after-career a boy, in nine 
cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to 
no practical purposes" (p. 7). But (to use a 
phrase of Mr. Spencer's) is this not due to "adap- 
tation to environment"? If it gives pleasure to 

72 



its possessor, how can it be bad? and if it give 
pleasure, is it not useful, is it not practical? 
Without asking how Mr. Spencer got his fig- 
ures — "nine cases out of ten" — his condemnation 
by no means applies only to students of Latin 
and Greek. Of necessity many, many students 
must apply their physics, chemistry, etc., to no 
practical purpose. For practical purposes in this 
world at least can not be determined beforehand 
and it is consequently impossible for any student 
to tell just what sciences and how much of each 
he should require in his school life in order to 
meet his particular practical purposes in later life. 
Nor can Mr. Spencer's condemnation refer to 
any defect in Latin and Greek. If it be wrong 
to apply Latin and Greek to no practical purpose, 
this counts against the motives of the learner, not 
against the subjects ; and it does not matter what 
be the subjects, the learner still must bear the 
blame for not applying them to practical pur- 
poses. Practical purposes are not their own jus- 
tification. Many wicked purposes are intensely 
practical and scientific knowledge at the com- 
mand of a murderer may but make him more 
skilful in doing the deed and covering up his 
tracks afterward or in escaping the consequences 
if caught. Scientific knowledge is by no means 
free from the strictures which Mr. Spencer puts 
on the classics. At the most he can claim they 
have outlived their usefulness. They are yet 
rather lively corpses. 

School education should aim at practical pur- 
poses — such is the implication of Mr. Spencer's 

73 



theory, i. We are not agreed what practical 
purposes are. 2. As before stated, they can not 
be determined a priori, especially in a dynamic, 
transitional form of society. 3. Consequently as 
purposes are relative to the state of society, we 
must have an eye to the probable future form. 
4. Supposing we could adapt our school methods 
to practical purposes, it has not been shown that 
such would be wholly good. Our subordinating 
the ideal to the practical might produce a sordid 
stagnation. 5. If practical purposes mean money 
getting, the "business of life," an emphatic pro- 
test must be made against practical purposes. 
6. There is a deeper unity of meaning in the his- 
tory of education that overreaches the implied 
separation between the practical and the ideal. 
Among progressive nations I doubt whether Mr. 
Spencer can find any instance of a system of edu- 
cation holding its own for a long period of time, 
based upon what he calls "practical purposes." 
Every such instance if he could find any would 
contradict his sweeping condemnation of past 
practices. 

"To prepare us for complete living is the func- 
tion which education has to discharge" (p. 16). 
Yes, but what is complete living? Is it more 
than a mere generality? For the Buddhist it is 
something far different from what it is for the 
Christian; different for the monk and for the lib- 
ertine; different for the philosopher and the dog- 
catcher; different for the stoic and epicurean. 
So runs the story; and each age gives its moral 
meaning and philosophic setting to its practices. 

74 



Even in these days in the centres of learning so 
many are the clashing interests that members of 
the same nation, citizens of the same city, nay, 
even brothers of the same household, do not 
agree what complete living is. Were we to agree 
what constitutes complete living for the nineteenth 
century we could scarcely expect agreement 
upon the materials best fitted to meet it. Nor 
would it of necessity be good, even could we do 
so; for the nineteenth century is manifestly far 
from perfection, and to wholly subordinate edu- 
cation to complete living of the nineteenth cen- 
tury type would be a gross wrong. 

But Mr. Spencer answers his own question. 
"The leading kinds of activity which constitute 
human life . . . may be naturally arranged into : 
i. Those activities which directly minister to 
self-preservation; to those activities which, by 
securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minis- 
ter to self-preservation. 3. Those activities which 
have for their end the rearing and disciplining 
of offspring. 4. Those activities which are in- 
volved in the maintenance of proper social and 
political relations. 5. Those miscellaneous activ- 
ities which make up the leisure part of life, de- 
voted to the gratification of the tastes and feel- 
ings." This he says "is something like the ra- 
tional order of subordination. . . . We do not 
mean to say that these divisions are definitely 
separable. We do not deny that they are intri- 
cately entangled with each other in such ways 
that there can be no training for any that is not 
in some measure a training for all." While thus 

75 



recognizing the interrelations, of the activities of 
life, Mr. Spencer unfortunately looks at them 
through physical spectacles. The physical basis 
of life is viewed of primary importance; he fails 
to see that it has its meaning only in subordina- 
tion to the moral. The activities, as he sees, do 
not lie side by side; but he does not see that the 
first two classes can be justified only as a means 
to realize the higher ones. So I would call his 
class not the rational, but the physical subordina- 
tion; and his complete living is so complete that 
it can include every thief, firebug, murderer and 
every other form of wicked life within its scope. 
For he has not defined complete living as morally 
good or righteous living. Forms of life are them- 
selves in need of a criticism. 

Education securing self-preservation "is in 
great part already provided for. . . . Nature 
takes it into her own hands." Outside of this Mr. 
Spencer leaves unanswered questions of great im- 
portance to the teacher. He does not tell us 
whether the time given to each class is to be pro- 
portioned to its position in the scheme, to the 
difficulty of acquiring the assigned knowledge or 
the amount assigned. A principle of selection is 
indicated when, in speaking of accomplishments, 
the fine arts and "all those things which consti- 
tute the efflorescence of civilization," he says, 
"As they occupy the leisure part of life, so should 
they occupy the leisure part of education." This 
again takes life at present for granted as self- 
sufficient and needing no further justification. 
And again can Mr. Spencer be quoted against 

76 



Mr. Spencer, for far from restricting the leisure 
part, he has the rosiest outlook for its growth. 
Listen. "We yield to none in the value we at- 
tach to aesthetic culture and its pleasures. With- 
out painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the 
emotions produced by natural beauty of every 
kind, life would lose half its charm. So far from 
thinking that the training and gratification of the 
tastes are unimportant, we believe the time will 
come when they will occupy a much larger share 
of human life than now." Ah, but Mr. Spencer, if 
that be so, education can play but little part in 
that glorious development for you have made its 
chief purposes servants to the sordid things of 
life. Why will it not become more servile? For 
you tell us the keen competition of modern life 
but few can bear without injury, that thousands 
break down under the strain and that the strain 
seems likely to increase (p. 239); and again (p. 
283) "intenser competition taxes the energies and 
abilities of every adult," the young must be sub- 
jected to a more severe discipline than hereto- 
fore. Why then will not the future see more and 
more time and energies devoted to education 
subserving the first two classes of activities? Mr. 
Spencer's outlook is not so rosy, after all. Aes- 
thetic education and the warm life of feeling will 
be slowly frozen to death. 

But taking him at his most cheerful word, 
when shall it come to pass? "When the forces of 
Nature have been fully conquered to man's use- — 
when the means of production have been brought 
to perfection — when labor has been economized 

77 



to the highest degree — when education has been 
so systematized that a preparation for the more 
essential activities may be made with compara- 
tive rapidity — and when, consequently, there is 
a great increase of spare time; then will the poe- 
try, both of Art and Nature, rightly fill a large 
space in the minds of all." All Mr. Spencer's 
conditions can be admitted without his conclu- 
sion, "consequently, there is a great increase of 
spare time." On the contrary, we can conceive 
a state in which labor is economized and educa- 
tion systematized with yet the masses a servile 
lot toiling for the benefit of the few. No less a 
philosopher than John Stuart Mill, with whom 
Mr. Spencer once expressed himself most anx- 
ious to be in agreement, has said that inventions 
have not "lightened the toil of any human being," 
and also that "they have enabled a greater num- 
ber to live the same life of drudgery and impris- 
onment." With all the external, material im- 
provements there must go an improvement in 
moral life. Not only must the forces of Nature 
be conquered, but man's intense selfishness must 
be controlled and made to minister unto the bet- 
ter life. That universal nature in man linking 
him with the Divine will demand its rights and 
assert its primacy. Then and only then can 
God's kingdom come on earth. 

What knowledge best meets the needs of the 
five classes of activities? Mr. Spencer takes up 
each and the answer every time is — Science. 
"Not exhaustive cultivation in any one, su- 
premely important though it may be — not even 

78 



an exclusive attention to the two, three or four 
divisions of greatest importance; but an atten- 
tion to all — greatest where the value is greatest, 
less where the value is less, least where the value 
is least. For the average man . . . the desid- 
eratum is a training that approaches nearest to 
perfection in the things which most subserve 
complete living, and falls more and more below 
perfection in the things that have more and more 
remote bearings on complete living" (p. 22). I 
have already remarked the relativity of complete 
living and its subordination to morality — right 
living. Our attention must be directed not 
merely to how much value we get, but also to 
the kind of value. Thus for a young lady of to- 
day, only elementary knowledge of mathematics 
is needed, unless she choose some special posi- 
tion. Value of a better kind would be derived 
from good literature and the philosophy of his- 
tory. Although both these fall outside of Mr. 
Spencer's first two classes, their utility in broad- 
ening the mind and improving character far ex- 
ceeds that of mathematics. A man is not a mere 
calculating machine, searching for cause and ef- 
fect only in the material world ; but a person with 
rights and feelings most precious to him in his 
real, every-day life. Cause and effect in rights 
and feelings have proved in history more import- 
ant than the logic of mathematics. Great world 
movements have been inspired chiefly by the 
contact of living sympathies rather than by rea- 
soning, though reason played its part in the 
whole. Thus according to Lecky the decline of 

79 



superstition and persecution was not so much 
due to abstract arguments against them as to a 
slow change in the mental attitude of the people, 
a more or less unconscious influence of the Zeit- 
geist. Even the wisest but dimly perceive the 
meaning and importance of the great drama in 
which they play the leading parts. 

Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, so- 
ciology, "the natural history of society," psychol- 
ogy, physiology and the theory and practice of 
education are the subjects in Mr. Spencer's cur- 
riculum. He shows how the principles enter into 
the various activities of life and underlie the arts. 
He mentions the carpenter, surveyor, engineer, 
architect and a host of others. Nearly all the 
facts may be admitted and yet Mr. Spencer's in- 
ferences may be denied as applied to the curricu- 
lum of a public school. It is impossible to teach in 
a public school all or even a few of the arts men- 
tioned by Mr. Spencer; were it possible, it could 
not be justified on the ground of utility, for but 
very few of the multitude of facts would probably 
ever be used to save life, to aid business or min- 
ister to social life. Suppose we taught bridge- 
building or the mechanics of engineering. How 
often would we use the facts learned to tell the 
strength of the bridges over which we traveled 
or the safety of the curves around which our 
train was whirling? Viewed from the side of the 
facts of the various arts, Mr. Spencer's argu- 
ment becomes merely a plea for special schools. 
Now let us view it from the side of principles. 
We are not to teach the arts in particular, but the 

80 



principles which underlie them. But we now get 
into trouble, for they must be taught inductively 
and hence we must go to the facts and practices 
of the art as a basis of the induction. Pupils 
would be taught from machines, stoves, and a 
multitude of scientific appliances. Now to teach 
all these things would take perhaps a bit more 
time than could be spared. But suppose they 
have been taught. Mr. Spencer's chief justifica- 
tion for them is their utility, their superior value 
over others. A fallacy vitiates the argument. 
Knowledge of principles does not insure, guaran- 
tee or necessarily issue in use or application of 
those principles. Scientific knowledge as well as 
every other, suffers from the contingencies of life 
and the weaknesses of human nature. Physio- 
logical principles are tolerably well known 
among educated people; we hear lots of talk 
about following the laws of nature; but we read 
a great deal more about cures for dyspepsia and 
dozens of patent medicines for scores of ailments. 
Newspaper advertisements thus furnish an a pos- 
teriori basis for inferring some prevailing social 
conditions. Mr. Spencer knows these facts, for 
he says, "Men's necessities often compel them to 
transgress." The cause is deeper rooted than 
lack of knowledge of hygienic laws. 

Every time a stone is thrown, every time a 
step is taken, the laws of motion are implied and 
applied, but it does not necessarily follow that 
they will be better applied by a person because 
he understands them. I cannot throw a ball any 
better or walk to better advantage now that I 

81 



know the laws of motion than when a boy when 
I didn't know them. A course in military en- 
gineering would scarcely enable a policeman to 
shoot more accurately at a fleeing criminal. In 
the most interesting field of life — our own per- 
sonality in its relations to others — science is well- 
nigh futile to give any law that will apply to every 
case or even to a great number. A large part 
of life seems doomed to rest upon empirical ex- 
perience rather than upon conscious knowledge 
of scientific laws. Scientific laws of some sort 
may be found in all experience, but they deter- 
mine very little for us. Determination rests 
chiefly with the human will and that can not be 
calculated beforehand. 

Mr. Spencer distinguishes three values in 
knowledge — intrinsic, quasi-intrinsic and con- 
ventional. "Such facts as that sensations of 
numbness and tingling commonly precede paral- 
ysis, that the resistance of water to a body mov- 
ing through it varies as the square of the velocity, 
that chlorine is a disinfectant — these and the 
truths of Science in general, are of intrinsic value : 
they will bear on human conduct ten thousand 
years hence as they do now" (p. 23). 1. Such 
facts as bear directly on the conduct of any par- 
ticular person can be learned by that person with- 
out taking a course in the cognate science under- 
lying the particular facts. Thus, the ordinary 
man could become acquainted with the most im- 
portant chemical facts bearing on his own af- 
fairs without taking a course in chemistry. The 

82 



multitude of facts I learned in a course in chem- 
istry have proved of very little practical value, of 
little utility, while the atomic theory, as a theory, 
has had much more active influence on my con- 
duct than any single fact in chemistry. In my 
own case the value as discipline far outweighed 
the value as "intrinsic" knowledge. 2. Mr. Spen- 
cer makes universality and persistence in time 
the criterion of the worth of knowledge. On 
this count he should advocate ithe higher mathe- 
matics as of supreme importance for practical 
life. Yet surely for the mass of men to-day they 
have very little effect directly upon conduct. 
Their value as discipline is greater than their 
value as knowledge. 3. Following Mr. Spen- 
cer's method, metaphysics should occupy a prom- 
inent place in his scheme. Metaphysics is 
conspicuous by its absence. Yet it underlies all 
the sciences, making them possible. Everything 
we say and do may be traced to its root in meta- 
physics. "Religion," says Schopenhauer, "is a 
metaphysic of the common people." The con- 
ception of ultimate purpose has had greater ef- 
fect on conduct than that of proximate utility. 
Indeed, proximate utility can be justified only on 
grounds of ultimate purpose and may be shown 
to have sprung from the metaphysical nature of 
man. 4. The fundamental requisite for the exist- 
ence of society is not scientific knowledge par 
excellence, but mutual regard for rights. Civil 
society as the "institute of rights" demands an 
ethical basis first or scientific knowledge simply 
will not develop, for that is possible only where 

83 



society exists. We must not forget the millions 
who exist with practically no developed scien- 
tific knowledge, but yet hold together as socie- 
ties and in many cases are happier than we, if 
judged by quantity. On Mr. Spencer's ethical 
philosophy they are nearer the ideal than we. 

When Mr. Spencer demands a reform of indi- 
vidualistic history and emphasizes the import- 
ance of social history — "descriptive sociology," 
"the natural history of society" — he comes peril- 
ously near those German thinkers whose philos- 
ophy he repudiates and makes a loophole 
through which enter the classical languages he 
had previously excluded. As his thought devel- 
ops, he gets away from a narrow conception 
of science, finally science becomes all-inclusive, 
identical with philosophy. What is untrue is un- 
scientific. In a scientific history Mr. Spencer 
would have "all facts which help us to under- 
stand how a nation has grown and organized 
itself"; also "an account of its government. . . . 
the structure, principles, methods, prejudices, 
corruption, etc., which it exhibited; . . . the ec- 
clesiastical government, . . . social observances, 
. . . popular life out of doors and in doors, . . . 
the relations of parents to children, the industrial 
system, . . . the intellectual condition, . . . aes- 
thetic culture, . . . and lastly, to connect the 
whole, should be exhibited the morals, theoret- 
ical and practical, of all classes" (pp. 59 to 61). 
1. These would all be impossible without a 
knowledge of the language and literature of the 
people under consideration. 2. Language and 

84 



literature express phases in the development of 
a people as certainly as law, politics, religion, 
science or architecture. 3. Mr. Spencer's exclu- 
sion of language and literature is therefore purely 
arbitrary: 4. Latin and Greek are all the more 
necessary to "rational interpretation of social 
phenomena" such as ours because so much in our 
own has grown out of the life of the Greeks and 
Romans. 5. Morals, Mr. Spencer recognizes 
after all his praise of the physical, as necessary 
''to connect the whole." 6. The atomistic indi- 
vidualism in the logical and psychological devel- 
opment of his theory of evolution thus brings 
about its own antithesis in his demand for social 
history. 

As Mr. Spencers general statement does not 
keep out the classical languages let us pass to 
his special reasons. "Supposing it true that clas- 
sical education conduces to elegance and correct- 
ness of style; it can not be said that elegance and 
correctness of style are comparable in impor- 
tance to a familiarity with the principles that 
should guide the rearing of children. Grant that 
the taste may be greatly improved by reading all 
the poetry written in extinct languages; yet it is 
not to be inferred that such improvement of taste 
is equivalent in value to an acquaintance with 
the laws of health" (p. 67). 1. Unless it be as- 
sumed that the knowledge of the principles of 
training and of the laws of health is to be used, 
I fail to see its superiority over the classical learn- 
ing. 2. On Mr. Spencer's own principles, the 

85 



classical learning if used must be immensely su- 
perior to the scientific which is not used. 3. 
Much disagreement exists concerning the prin- 
ciples which "should guide the rearing of chil- 
dren" and "the laws of health" are by no means as 
definite as might be imagined. Consequently, 
even if put into practice bad results could follow. 
4. There is no necessary antagonism between 
classical learning and scientific; both exist to- 
gether, as many a student can testify. Mr. Spen- 
cer should not say much about the laws of health 
as a large part of school education, because "that 
all-important part which goes to secure direct 
self-preservation, is in great part already pro- 
vided for. Nature takes it into her own hands." 
When a few pages farther on, he tells of the many 
ways we may become ill or enfeebled, one is 
tempted to ask, "What has become of Nature 
with her safeguards?" Nature with a capital N 
is a poor provider, it seems. 5. Granting the im- 
portance of Mr. Spencer's claims, it does not fol- 
low that the subjects mentioned can best be 
taught by making them parts of the school curric- 
ulum. Home influence should be the most pow- 
erful in giving reality to the laws of health. It is 
the exceptional pupil that of his own free will 
puts in practice the hygienic rules learnt at 
school. 6. Mr. Spencer judges classical learning 
by its least important qualities. 

"While language familiarizes with non-rational 
relations, science familiarizes with rational rela- 
tions. While the one exercises memory only, the 

86 



other exercises both memory and understand- 
ing" (p. 83). But Mr. Spencer here uses 
"science" in its narrow sense. Thus used, he 
must either exclude ethics, sociology and educa- 
tion from the sciences or else include language 
within them under sociology. For on the narrow 
meaning, it has been seriously questioned 
whether there are such sciences as ethics, sociol- 
ogy and education ; while if they are sciences, as 
Mr. Spencer says they are (in the wider sense), 
then there is a science of language, and its rela- 
tions are just as rational as any other within so- 
ciology. For by rational relations Mr. Spencer 
means "causal relations," "necessary relations" 
and by non-rational relations he means "fortui- 
tous relations," "accidental relations." Now I 
submit that language as a part of sociology has 
causal, necessary, rational relations to the nature 
of the people whose language it is ; to their envi- 
ronment, to emigration, to neighboring peoples, 
to languages from which it grew, to art, law, pol- 
itics, religion and literature of the people and 
their historic epoch. I further submit that ac- 
cording to Mr. Spencer's large "Synthetic Philos- 
ophy" non-rational relations is a contradiction in 
terms; that only causal relations can exist in any 
and all departments of life; and that the differ- 
ence between the necessary relations of mathe- 
matics (with the sciences closest to it) and the 
so-called "accidental" relations of ethics, sociol- 
ogy and education is not and cannot be a differ- 
ence in rationality, but only a difference in the 
complexity of the relations and conditions under 

87 



which the cause operates. For the sciences last 
named deal with physical, chemical and mechan- 
ical relations the same as mathematics, only more 
complicated, that is, if we trust Mr. Spencer's 
metaphysics; and if we trust his conception of 
rational relations in his "Education," the sciences 
all suffer as they get away from mathematics ; the 
farther, the less rational they must become. 

Nor can Mr Spencer's sharp separation of 
memory and understanding be maintained. Facts 
remembered must (in his psychology) be co- 
ordinated according to some law, i. c, they must 
be understood; and conversely we remember what 
we understand. We cannot grant that language 
of necessity "exercises memory only." Mr. Spen- 
cer himst!f qualifies his charges by the words 
"as ordinarily carried on" and the languages "as 
commonly learned"; and he likewise qualifies his 
praises of science by the words "when properly 
taught they are understood" as causal relations. 
So if we take Mr. Spencer at his word, the 
sciences may be improperly taught and fail to 
exercise the understanding. A young man who 
remembered many facts of science did not re- 
member how to use the facts when the occasion 
required; if for nothing more worthy, he might 
have used them to "show off" his learning as 
well as if he had been a devoted student of the 
classics. So Mr. Spencer leaves the question 
open whether the languages if properly taught 
might not exercise both memory and understand- 
ing. His separation of the two seems to depend 
on a faculty-psychology which considers mental 



activities independent units, mechanically sep- 
arated like blocks of wood, or with an impassable 
chasm between. This view is contradicted not 
only by a true interpretation of evolution and by 
the best parts of Mr. Spencer's social philosophy, 
but also by the facts of common life. The struc- 
ture of our language; the overlapping activities 
classed by Mr. Spencer; the law of association 
and of correlation in psychology; the futile at- 
tempts to classify the sciences by sharply defining 
the scope and method of each; and the inter- 
changeability of general terms, like history of 
philosophy, philosophy of history, science of psy- 
chology, psychology of science — all these form a 
basis for an a posteriori argument for the organic 
unity of mind, a point on which Mr. Spencer's 
philosophy is notoriously weak. 

The opening sentences of his "First Princi- 
ples" read. "We too often forget that not only is 
there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very 
generally a soul of truth in things erroneous. 
While many admit the abstract probability that 
a falsity has usually a nucleus of reality, few bear 
this abstract probability in mind, when passing 
judgment on the opinions of others." Mr. Spen- 
cer, I fear, has missed the soul of truth in the clas- 
sical learning. In his anxiety to do something 
great for his favorite sciences, he fails to inquire 
closely into the learning he opposes to them to 
find "what there was in it which commended it 
to men's minds." Language no less than science 
springs from a common root in the mind of man. 
Representing a great phase of his life it can claim 

89 



a place in the curriculum as well as science. 
Latin and Greek form epochs in the history of 
languages and Rome and Greece in the history 
of the world. No one that looks carefully can 
deny the great influence those so-called dead lan- 
guages and civilizations exert on our life to-day. 
Being dead they yet speak. Law, art, language, 
politics, literature, religion, philosophy, yea, even 
the sciences, find the ancient civilizations throw- 
ing light upon them. He that believes our life can 
be understood only in the light of its history thus 
has strong reasons for studying the classics of 
Greece and Rome, and without denying science 
a place, and an honorable place too, in the cur- 
riculum. Science as a phase in the history of our 
civilization can not be denied its rights. But it 
must also recognize its limits; for elated with its 
great successes in the nineteenth century it has 
become not only dogmatic, but hogmatic, having 
shown a disposition to claim everything in sight. 
Mr. Spencer has but half the truth in his re- 
marks on painting. "In painting, the necessity 
for scientific knowledge, empirical if not rational, 
is still more conspicuous. In what consists the 
grotesqueness of Chinese pictures, unless in their 
utter disregard of the law of appearances — in their 
absurd linear perspective, and their want of aerial 
perspective?" (p. 70). The primary purpose of 
painting is not to teach scientific laws, but to 
arouse feelings and in the highest sense to arouse 
feelings of a moral and religious character. Cer- 
tainly, to do this involves some degree of scien- 
tific knowledge, or following scientific laws; but 

90 



these are only the means, not the end, for when 
the end becomes such that neglect of scientific 
laws is necessary, the laws are straightway 
neglected. For example, in comic art success de- 
pends upon a degree of exaggeration, violating 
scientific laws. Doubtless, some aspects of truth 
may be found in such, but other aspects are ig- 
nored. Even in serious work certain aspects are 
neglected for the sake of the artist's purpose. 
From the purely physical scientific point of view, 
details in the foreground and background should 
receive as much attention as other things in the 
foreground and background. But the real artist 
does not paint every pore, every blemish or every 
detail he sees in his subjects. Yet a scrupulous 
regard for pure science would impel him to do so. 
The essential characteristic of a picture is the 
meaning. If that be well conveyed, from the 
artistic standpoint it is good art; but from the 
ethical standpoint the meaning must be moral, 
it must appeal to the better nature of the specta- 
tors. Chinese art, grotesque as it is, would be 
successful if it were meant to be grotesque. That 
some part of truth is there, I do not deny; nor 
do I deny that such truth is scientific in the wider 
sense. But I do say that in order to concentrate 
attention on the chief aspects of the truth he 
is representing, the painter must neglect minor 
aspects. Though he may be scientific in the best 
sense, he is unscientific in the lower sense in so 
far as he neglects those minor aspects; and I 
gladly admit that Mr. Spencer identifying truth 
and science can say that my argument only 

9i 



proves his own case, but in the restricted sense of 
the term scientific, his own arguments are self- 
contradictory and carried to their logical conclu- 
sion would subordinate imagination and its pro- 
ducts to physical sciences. Santa Claus and 
fairies would cease to have a meaning in the 
training of childhood. Thomas Gradgrind would 
be supreme in education. 

"Not only, however, for intellectual discipline 
is science the best; but also for moral discipline" 
(p. 84). Mr. Spencer proves (?) his case by first 
assaulting the learning of the classics. The pu- 
pil's "constant attitude of mind is that of sub- 
mission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary 
result is a tendency to accept without inquiry 
whatever is established." Now science may be 
taught in the same way and secondly in learning 
the classics there is no need of an attitude of 
submission or of its so-called necessary result, 
for the rule in the grammar can be reached in- 
ductively from instances of it no less than can a 
scientific law, or given the rule, it can be verified 
by appeal to the language no less than a 
scientific law. Moreover, Mr. Spencer's reasons 
at this point would count against English 
grammar, French grammar, and the others 
as well as against Greek and Latin. I 
do not see why the following sentence 
can not be applied to language as well as to 
science: "Its truths are not accepted upon au- 
thority alone; but all are at liberty to test them 
— nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to 
think out his own conclusions." Nor has science 

92 



historically proved to be always a bulwark of mo- 
rality; indeed, I have more than once heard it 
used to justify immorality and put a premium on 
human weaknesses. Mr. Spencer's hedonistic 
ethics with its emphasis of the pleasurable can 
scarcely be freed from the charge. In moral dis- 
cipline the essential requirement is respect for 
rights — self-respect and respect for others — "Be 
a person and respect others as persons" — "Let 
your act be such that you can will it to become 
a universal law." Science has no monopoly on 
that discipline. From the study of science, says 
Mr. Spencer, "there flows that independence 
which is a most valuable element in character." 
But character is not necessarily good and inde- 
pendence may characterize the criminal as well 
as the law-abiding citizen. The thief is independ- 
ent of the temptations of goodness, but is a 
slave to the temptations of wickedness. Good in- 
deed is the man that has attained a much better 
kind of independence — freedom from evil. No 
shame, but an honor is it to him to acknowledge 
his dependence on goodness; and if the libertine 
reproaches him with being a slave to goodness, 
how much worse a slave is that same libertine to 
the animal that lords it over his own soul ! Nor 
has science any exclusive claim to the exercise of 
"perseverance and sincerity." Both of these 
may be directed to bad ends. Does not Mr. Spen- 
cer tell us of the Turcoman who is so sincere in 
his stealing that every year he makes a pilgrim- 
age to the tomb of some noted robber? One 
needs only to study a little criminology to learn 

93 



how persevering are the inhabitants of Sing Sing, 
Cherry Hill and Moyamensing. Individualizing 
independence is one of the worst foes of a good 
home life and a high moral character. 

"The discipline of science is superior to that of 
our ordinary education, because of the religious 
culture that it gives" (p. 85). One may admit 
that science may be religious, but it is not neces- 
sarily so. On the contrary, it has at times been 
irreligious, as Mr. Spencer recognizes, but he 
calls that "the science that is current" and op- 
poses to it "true science that has passed beyond 
the superficial into the profound." This looks 
dangerously like metaphysics, which Mr. Spencer 
forgot to put in his curriculum. But at the time 
Mr. Spencer wrote (1861) there was good cause 
for thinking science irreligious; it was antagonis- 
tic not only "to the superstitions that pass under 
the name of religion/' but in being handmaid 
to an agnostic metaphysics, was attacking the 
very fundamental basis of religion, both theoret- 
ical and practical. Mr. Spencer's agnosticism 
leaves no room for "divinely-ordained methods," 
for "a beneficent order of things," for the writing 
of "the finger of God upon the strata of the 
Earth" — no room or speaking "teleologically," 
for making assertions about the Absolute and its 
relations to men and the world. But all these 
find a place in "Education." Under an agnostic 
theory, religious feelings would starve to death 
and religious theory be a cobweb of pretentious 
humbug. 

94 



"Devotion to science is a tacit worship — a tacit 
worship of worth in the things studied; and by 
implication in their Cause. It is not a mere lip- 
homage, but homage expressed in actions — not a 
professed respect, but a respect proved by the 
sacrifice of time, thought and labor." Then, too, 
science "generates a profound respect for, and 
an implicit faith in, those uniform laws which 
underlie all things" (p. 87). Here appears again 
the defect of studying things rather than persons. 
If a grocer jumps away from his counter to avoid 
having his toe crushed by a falling weight, is this 
not a "tacit worship" according to Mr. Spencer? 
It is "expressed in actions" and evidences a "pro- 
found respect for and implicit faith in those uni- 
form laws which underlie all things." The gro- 
cer is familiar enough with the phenomena of 
gravitation and of masses in motion (to say noth- 
ing of the nature of the toe) to let them influence 
his conduct, even though he may not know 
G = ^gp With Mr. Spencer's external stand- 
ard everyone is religious. Every one does much 
as the grocer; a thief may study various things, 
thereby testifying to their worth and by implica- 
tion thus worshiping their Cause. Likewise the 
cannibal who eats his captured enemy and sacri- 
fices time, thought and labor to prepare him for 
the cauldron. On Mr. Spencer's scientific 
theory, with cause and effect universal, every 
such fact is scientific, every one follows some nat- 
ural law. Death is a scientific fact; it is not un- 
natural for a person to be ill; it is impossible to 
act on other than some natural law. Consequently 

95 



as all of us so act, and such action expresses reli- 
gious homage, we are therefore all religious. For 
all we know, when we worship the Unknowable, 
we may be worshiping something utterly bad. 
Between facts about things and facts about per- 
sons and nations, Mr. Spencer seems rather to 
choose the former, while he swerves so much as 
to give us practically no ideal for which to work. 
For it is in ideal personality, *. e. God, that things 
get their purpose and a religion that sacrifices 
human personality to things and to a philosophic 
abstraction, i. e. the Unknowable, can never per- 
manently satisfy either the head or the heart. 

Having judged Mr. Spencer piecemeal, let us 
now look at him in the light of history, trying to 
discover the soul of truth in his work. I like to 
think of him as a mode of that Unknowable about 
which he knows so much. The particular mode 
of which he is a representative is nineteenth cen- 
tury naturalism, utilitarianism and industrialism 
with its ideal of individual competiton. His 
sweeping condemnation of the past and underval- 
uation of authority is strongly reminiscent of the 
philosophers of the French Revolution. His ag- 
nosticism develops from the same faulty ab- 
straction as Kant's Ding-an-Sich. The absolute 
and irreconcilable separation of subject and ob- 
ject in "First Principles" has a fitting parallel in 
"Education" in the antagonism of the useful and 
ornamental, and of the sciences and the classics. 
His empiricism in psychology is a continuation of 
the traditional English method of Hobbes, Locke 
and Hume, while his individualism in political 

96 



economy follows the orthodox political economy 
of Smith, Malthus and Ricardo. His naturalism 
and hedonism have their immediate roots in the 
French Revolution. The emphasis put on the 
pleasurable in his ethical philosophy is reflected 
in the methods recommended by him in "Educa- 
tion," particularly in Chapter II. 

"Mr. Spencer's 'Education' as a polemic," says 
Professor Francis Burke Brandt, "is a decided 
success, but it is neither a science nor philosophy 
of education." Much that Mr. Spencer argued 
for has been brought to pass and we can already 
see its results. As a reaction against the over- 
dose of classical learning in England at the time 
he wrote, his work had a beneficial effect, but he 
has swung too far to the other extreme and as 
can be proved from the history of education, his 
charges against the past have no such universal 
validity as might be imagined. The Copernican 
system of astronomy was originated by a monk 
who certainly knew a bit of mathematics, and 
Kepler discovered his laws on a metaphysical 
belief in a mathematical harmony underlying na- 
ture, while Kant, the great German philosopher, 
in some measure anticipated Laplace's nebular 
theory. Leibnitz, Descartes, Newton and Sir 
William Hamilton have made notable contribu- 
tions to mathematics. All these men were brought 
up under the classical system repudiated by Mr. 
Spencer. While it is possible they accomplished 
their work in spite of their classics, it would be 
a quite difficult point to prove and at any rate 
shows there is no necessary antagonism between 

97 



science and the classics. One need not delve 
deeply into the history of education to prove that 
as a rule astronomy and mathematics have from 
time immemorial occupied an honorable place in 
the curriculum. 

Many of the particular charges Mr. Spencer 
brings against parents and social observances 
are true, but they do not follow from his philo- 
sophic or educational theory. Parents doubtless 
are often ignorant and make many blunders in 
consequence, yet I know more than one parent 
who commits the blunders mentioned by Mr. 
Spencer because of trying to put Mr. Spencer's 
ethical hedonism into practice. The pleasure of 
the child becomes a chief aim; accordingly he 
gets an exaggerated idea of his own importance 
and the reaction against the exaggeration leads 
the parent also into exaggeration. Thus in the 
domain of human actions science can not guaran- 
tee results. It works on the hypothetical syllo- 
gism, "If such and such and so and so be the case 
then perhaps this, that or the other will follow." 
Now at the dawn of the twentieth century let 
each one ask, Has science made me more truth- 
ful, more honest, more sincere, more dutiful as 
husband, wife, father, mother or friend? Has it 
made me more respectful of the rights of others 
and kept me a better citizen? In consequence of 
science, am I a better man or woman than I was 
yesterday, last week, last month, last year? In 
consequence of science, is the city, state or na- 
tion more moral than at any period of history? 
Are there fewer frauds and liars pro rata in the 

98 



business world than ever before? Is science to 
be praised for the works of art that delight and 
instruct us? Shall we thank science for giving 
us a new Mint? Shall we blame the classics for 
the ugly, smoky piles of brick factories amid 
which it has been placed? And finally, has science 
made us a more religious people? 

The great question, What knowledge is of 
most worth? is but a part of the greater one, 
What is the worth of life? At one blow could the 
pessimist shatter the whole structure reared by 
Mr. Spencer. We can fancy him saying, "Mr. 
Spencer, your whole system presupposes life is 
worth living and aims to continue the ills and ir- 
rationality inherent in life itself. As intelligence 
increases, we become more susceptible to pain 
and misery. Relief can be permanent only when 
comes the will to live no more. Unless your sys- 
tem makes people realize the utter futility of life 
and show them utter oblivion as the cure for all 
their woes, it receives my unqualified condem- 
nation. You have not proved but dogmatically 
have taken for granted the foundation upon 
which your system rests." 

Now I'll venture a bit of a prophecy. Love, 
science and competition have been overdone in 
this nineteenth century and the reaction against 
them is already on. In that reaction, love, 
science and competition will have their limits 
and purposes more clearly defined. Like most 
reactions, it will swing a bit too far, perhaps tak- 
ing up and over-developing socialism or some 
other element that has not yet appeared clearly 

8 L.ofC. 99 



enough to have its importance recognized. 
Against that over-development will come an op- 
posite reaction whose specific nature I do not 
presume to foresee. 

As has already been said, science as an import- 
ant phase in which man's mind manifests itself 
deserves a place in the curriculum; but being 
only one and not all phases, it can not justly de- 
mand the whole program. No object of the ex- 
ternal world can permanently satisfy man's long- 
ings, for no such object embraces within it truth, 
beauty and moral goodness. Science in the re- 
stricted meaning, applying only to external 
things, to the soulless world, finds itself unable 
to meet the needs of soulful creatures. Science 
in the larger sense comes near to man, however, 
and when truth, beauty and moral goodness meet 
in human personality, the ideal comes nearest 
realization on this earthly sphere. Science in the 
larger sense dealing with human personality 
passes then beyond the finite, for it becomes 
necessary to deal with the infinite in man that 
links him with the Divine. With science culmi- 
nating in the science of religion, every need of 
man therein finds satisfaction. 



ioo 



THE SCHOOL AND THE CRIMINAL. 

The evolution of wickedness is a fascinating- 
study. The thief keeps pace with the detective. 
Progress (development, civilization) does not 
constitute its own justification. What crimes are 
committed in its name! Its vices are carried 
among the uncivilized and its virtues often left 
at home by the inhabitants of the barracks and 
forecastle, who are its chief representatives. 
Crime flourishes in the great centres of learning 
and refinement. Yet the means of education 
have wondrously grown. Not only the public 
school, but the press, the pulpit, societies, free 
lecturships and free libraries have helped to 
spread knowledge. But in spite of the deluge, 
the volcanoes of crime refuse to be put out. Is 
the school to blame? 

Pouring knowledge into a black sheep does 
not whiten the knowledge or the sheep. His pur- 
poses run counter; increased knowledge becomes 
a more powerful tool to realize those purposes. 
His fall from grace is greater, because he "sins 
against the light." Knowledge of money-mak- 
ing need not mean a full pocket-book; neither 
need knowledge of righteousness issue in right 
conduct. How many pupils practice the hygienic 
laws they learn in school? How many teach- 
ers? Thus a fundamental fallacy vitiates the ar- 
guments of those blaming the school for failing 
to make bad folks good by knowledge. Moral 

IOI 



goodness may exist without extensive knowl- 
edge. Doubtless discipline in study and order in 
school train character. But what kind of char- 
acter? If the evil-will already exist, they may 
make it more determined and methodical. Char- 
acter manifests itself in different ways under 
changing conditions. School life is scarcely rich 
enough to give thorough guidance to character, 
making it able to triumph over a great world bris- 
tling with temptations. A good reputation 
gained at school is no guarantee of an upright 
character after school is over. Discipline at 
school may have its purpose defeated by lax so- 
cial conditions. Reaction against restraint may 
therefore be intensified by very contrast. Who 
has not seen pupils let out of school cut up antics 
perhaps best paralleled by the ecstatic delight of 
mules freed from the noisome darkness of a coal 
mine? School does not create the will it aims to 
shape. It can receive neither merit for the good 
nor blame for the bad inherent in racial, social 
and individual heredity, save as it has already 
indirectly influenced them. Limited on the side 
both of knowledge and of discipline, neverthe- 
less the school can be held responsible for its 
wrong theories and methods putting a premium 
on human frailties; for too much readiness to 
adapt itself to new conditions without criticism 
or investigation of their moral import; and for 
failure to protect the deserving from the result- 
ing evils. 

Sweeping charges against the school lose 
much of their force, because the school is but one 

102 



of the ''institutions that educate." Is our society 
worth preserving? Grant it and the home be- 
comes its strongest bulwark; its purity, sanctity 
and integrity become of the first importance. 
Church, State and School may supplement the 
work of a good home, but they cannot replace it. 
But the castle has been assailed from "turret to 
foundation-stone" and the school has been indi- 
rectly crippled. 

"The greatest thing in the world is to have a 
good time" is a popular dogma. It needs prov- 
ing, as the good time often turns out to be any- 
thing but good. Innumerable clubs with innu- 
merable attractions demand our attention. Or- 
ganization run mad becomes a besetting sin. 
Home life suffers. Animalistic ethics corrupt its 
purity, agnostic and materialistic philosophy 
desecrate its sanctity, commercial utilitarianism 
shatters its integrity. "Every man is free to do 
that which he wills, provided he infringes not the 
equal freedom of any other man." This is Mr. 
Spencer's law of equal freedom; equal license 
would be a more fitting name. One may will lots 
of evil, pleasing and otherwise, without prevent- 
ing another from doing the same. But Mr. Spen- 
cer has a large following in these days. Uncle Sam 
is disgraced by lax divorce laws. A newspaper 
recently mentioned profanity as our most pop- 
ular sin. An I-don't-care-I-do-as-I-please spirit 
springs from individualism. Socialism long since 
has denied the right of property in land and the 
instruments of production (tools). Social dis- 
content is widespread. Disrespect for authority 

103 



is engendered partly by its abuse, partly by lack 
of legitimate enforcement, partly by reaction 
against its restraints. Caricatures, not always 
elevating, are freely published in the newspapers 
and they are not by any means the worst stuff 
finding a place in the press. Cheap literature of 
the most degrading kind can be bought openly, 
even by children. Art has not always been the 
handmaiden of virtue. Greed for gold does much 
to sway the destinies of nations. Commercialism 
makes heavy demands upon home life. Father 
pays his taxes and supposedly escapes the obli- 
gation to teach and encourage his children. 
Work done, he would like the rest of the time to 
himself. He has been free in giving his rights 
into the keeping of rogues, and long-suffering 
under misrule. The best children at school make 
virtually no effort to protect their right to an 
education from the aggressions of the more un- 
ruly. How's that for Yankee pluck? But the 
older folks are not such shining examples, after 
all, and the value of an education not so self- 
evident to them as we may imagine. Knowledge 
may show us ways to avoid the legitimate conse- 
quences of our wrong-doing and a variety of in- 
terests increase the scope of crime and the am- 
bition of the criminal. 

Home life, industrial life, jural life and religious 
life are historically prior to school life as we 
know it. Those explaining crime by blaming it 
on the school have put the cart before the horse. 
Cutting the school away from its roots in real 
life, attempting to judge it by itself, they are 

104 



morally color-blind, historically cross-eyed and 
victims of their own abstractions. The organic 
growth of the school from the past simply cannot 
be ignored without danger. The facts prove it. 

Is all this fight against spectres of our own 
imagination? Others are in the same boat, and if 
nothing more is gained, perhaps we may read 
Poe's tales with less terror and face ithe problems 
of life with more determined courage. 

Is the school to blame for crime? Not much. 



105 



SCHOOL SUPPLIES. 

Enormous sums of money are wasted by the 
destruction of supplies put in the hands of the 
pupils. Books that would last five or six years be- 
come fit for the retired list in five or six months. 
Pencils are cut to pieces, rulers get broken, pens 
are stolen, good paper thrown away, and so the 
waste goes merrily on. Who is responsible? The 
teacher? Then make her pay for it. The pupils 
and the parents? Then they must take the con- 
sequences. The purpose of the book is known, 
the aim of the school is known, the place and 
functions of pupil and parent are known. Viola- 
tions of these should be minimized. A boy gets 
a new history in September; the following June, 
the back is hanging off, several pages are torn, 
some smeared, sticky and perhaps disfigured by 
sundry pictures and remarks. Shall it be replaced 
by his parents or shall the boy be excused and 
the book thrown away? "Replace it," say you? 
Now see them shirk responsibility. "The baby 
tore the back, somebody else the pages, his little 
cousin smeared it, and Willie Green, a friend, 
drew the pictures." Green, too, would be the au- 
thorities if any such excuses were accepted. Es- 
sentially the book has its function, purpose and 
reason for being as a text-book on history. It is 
not a plaything, nor a tablet, not even a towel, 
neither a sketch-book nor note-book. A history 
so used is misused, a contradiction in terms, on 

106 



the road to perdition. How much liberty shall a 
pupil take with a book? None at all beyond that 
necessary to realize the purpose for which the 
book is created. In demanding such responsibil- 
ity from parents, the school is protecting not only 
itself, but also the tax-payers who stand the ex- 
pense. Short-sighted folk looking only to their 
immediate gain fail to see the enormous loss re- 
sulting from encouragement given thereto by ac- 
cepting all sorts of excuses to shirk responsibil- 
ity. A higher not a lower standard is needed. 

Why not uproot the whole paternal system? 
Why not go back to the "good old days" when 
the parent had to supply the books needed by his 
children? Easier said than done, for reasons too 
many to mention. To combine the advantages of 
our present method of giving supplies with the 
responsibility of the old, and with plans to avoid 
the disadvantages of both, seems the most prom- 
ising solution of the difficulty. I leave this to 
further investigation. 

Supplies, such as books, pencils, rulers and 
penholders, last longer if the teacher puts the 
name of the pupil thereon. It tends to fix indi- 
vidual responsibility and to identify lost property. 
It were foolish to require a teacher to examine 
books, etc., every day; time would not permit it, 
even were there no other objection. Mere lapse 
of time never gives a pupil the privilege to misuse 
a book or other supplies, even if his father does 
pay taxes, which is evidence of responsibility, not 
abolition of it. 

107 



DARWINISM AND THE TEACHER. 

Natural selection is unmoral. The struggle for 
life bristles with injustices. The survival of the 
fittest is not a moral law. Conditions are ele- 
gantly understood, uncritically taken for granted. 
The late J. J. Ingalls was fond of quoting, "The 
race is to the swift and the battle to the strong." 
But neither race nor battle is "on the square." 
In the game of life some players have loaded dice. 
Plants and animals exterminate those less favor- 
ably fixed. The fittest survive. That same code 
has been applied to the real life of men and given 
an ethical value undeserved. The result has been 
disastrously dehumanizing. Sweat-shops, foul 
factories and dens of iniquity receive a justifica- 
tion, 

The fittest survive. Fittest for what? For the 
conditions. What conditions? Natural condi- 
tions. Darwin's law has no business to say more. 
Specify its meaning and it begs the whole ques- 
tion — a truism, a tautology. Why? Because the 
fact of survival is made the test of fitness. Nat- 
ural selection does not create the materials and 
fundamental conditions necessary for its own 
working. Thoughtless folk would have it cover 
the whole gamut of being, forgetting that it is 
natural selection and as such has no better stand- 
ing until it prove itself moral selection. It de- 
serves not our approval. 

What has this to do with the teacher? 

1 08 



Let us dream a bit. Fancy a teacher in his 
class. How orderly! How interesting the les- 
son! What a successful teacher! Nevertheless 
he is a wicked man. — 'The dream changes. An- 
other teacher appears. Disorder reigns, lessons 
can not be taught, well-prepared and doubtless 
interesting though they be. Nevertheless that 
teacher's character is unimpeachable. But what 
an unsuccessful teacher! "Cast him into outer 
darkness!" — The fittest has survived. Do you 
hear a still small voice saying, "Ought it to be 
so?" 

Wake up! 



iog 



HARMONY vs. LINE OF LEAST RESIST- 
ANCE. 

To produce harmony of the faculties or equal 
development of the mental powers. — Take eight 
years of arithmetic for reasoning, five years of 
history and six years of geography for the mem- 
ory, eight years of drawing and music for the 
imagination, four years of physiology for the 
judgment, language and reading will do for al- 
most anything, add a few et ceteras for possible 
omissions. Take pupils for granted. Flavor with 
interest and serve. 

Such a recipe may legitimately follow from a 
kind of psychology much in favor since John 
Locke made famous the tabula rasa. Mental 
powers are viewed in an external or mechanical 
way. The harmony spoken of may fittingly be 
like so much hash or mince-meat; or be produced 
as if faculties were like so many blocks of wood 
to be geometrically designed or so many chords 
to be struck on a piano. Criticism has always 
shown such analogies inadequate jto characterize 
mind. Mind is unique, in a class by itself, and 
nothing taken from the non-mental world can 
ever truly represent that unique unity that diver- 
sifies itself in a multiciplicity of powers. Mind 
is the only adequate type of mind. A mechanical 
harmony is therefore impossible from the nature 
of the case. What then can be meant by har- 
mony of the faculties? 

no 



1. Let it mean internal, subjective harmony — 
no conflict existing among the powers. Then 
perhaps the finest example of harmony is the 
glutted pig. In the human realm a crazy man al- 
ways fancying himself Napoleon or Shakespeare 
or Caesar, or anyone living in a world of his own 
creations, may be said to have an internal har- 
mony of the faculties. Even as I write, a child 
playing happily near by seems to be possessed of 
a harmony that his elders have outgrown. Why, 
too, cannot a thief possess an internal harmony 
of faculties? So it seems there may be different 
kinds of harmony subjectively considered and 
the abstract claim in education for imparting 
such knowledge as will give equal development 
of the faculties has given no criterion for prefer- 
ring one sort of harmony rather than another. 

2. Let it mean harmony of the^subjective with 
the objective, so that the powers or faculties 
adjust themselves to existing external conditions. 
This view is extreme realism and is objection- 
able as a form of externalism. Perhaps the best 
examples of it are fellows of the sordid, practical 
type, ready for everything that turns up, "smiling 
as the wind sits," ever on the lookout for himself, 
regardless of ethical principles. Having brought 
external conditions into the discussion, the pre- 
ceding sentence prompts an interesting question : 
Are external conditions all ethical, and if not, 
should we purchase harmony at the cost of mo- 
rality? 

3. A third kind of harmony may be illustrated 
by those' believing in a low kind of don't-worry 



in 



philosophy. They combine the subjective satis- 
faction of the first with the sordid selfishness of 
the second. Good, bad or indifferent conditions 
do not upset their harmony. They get through 
life rather than live through it. Right or wrong 
gives them no occasion for worry; nor does 
death, sickness or injury of a friend or relative. 
Such people have not been the ones that have im- 
proved the world, and when such a person does 
wrong, I heartily wish his conscience to worry 
him into a better frame of mind. Vain wish if 
he has stifled the still small voice within! 

Harmony of the faculties does not constitute 
its own justification. Harmony is a fine, pretty 
word; but actual harmony may be bad, "a league 
with death and covenant with hell." The three 
kinds of harmony named contain no principle of 
selection. Not one of them is concerned with the 
ethical purpose which should be made the only 
possible ground for the existence of a faculty. 
Things as they are, powers as they now exist are 
taken for granted. No subordination to duty is 
noticeable. Faculties are abstracted, cut off from 
real facts, as if, regardless of functions and social 
ideals, they had some intrinsic value. Harmony 
may even be a fiction like the economic man; 
but it is viewed as somehow a good in itself. But 
surely it is not self-evident; for the existence of 
complete harmony — the cessation of all strife in 
the mind — may be but the sign of moral death 
and intellectual stagnation, a sign that the animal 
has conquered the man; while strife may be the 



sign of advancement, of a courageous determina- 
tion to master the animal and enthrone the man. 
Reason and imagination need not be on good 
terms in any individual. Perception and mem- 
ory get into disputes, and sensation is often any- 
thing but friendly with intuition. Is harmony 
possible and what kind of harmony will it be? 

The three kinds of harmony tabulated above all 
err in ignoring ethical purpose and in making no 
provision for growth toward the better; as a fact 
we have seen them make progress backward and 
downward. No new impulse can enter the sacred 
harmony, for that is forbidden by the individual- 
izing psychology upon which it rests. Now the 
objector may say, "There is nothing in the con- 
ceptions of harmony excluding the ethical factor 
and certain faculties may get more work to do 
or become more important without ruining the 
harmony just as we may put more apple or rai- 
sins in the mince-meat or more potatoes in the 
hash without spoiling them." In reply: i. While 
there is nothing in the conceptions of harmony 
excluding the ethical factor, there is nothing in- 
cluding it. It ought to be there as absolutely es- 
sential and no place has been made for it in the 
claim for harmony. 2. The conceptions are a bit 
too much like hash and mince-meat. Such psy- 
chology, true to its ideas, allows no real growth, 
but only aggregation, addition in kind to what is 
already there. 3. The mechanical separation of 
the faculties gives no test for telling that one is 

113 



any more important than any other or for esti- 
mating the worth of the work done by any of 
them. 

Further to clear the way let us ask, What kind 
of a world would it be, composed of folk with 
harmonious faculties? A trifle mixed, some- 
what confused, as we already know. One man's 
harmony need not agree with another's except in 
name. Each one of us in our life has sometime 
experienced both strife and peace within. But 
other things equal, as a companion give me the 
man with some strife within his soul rather than 
the fellow completely satisfied with himself. Not 
only then may one's purposes get twisted, but the 
harmonies of different persons may and do get 
fighting with each other, as, for example, the 
practical man and the dreamer. Yet in spite of 
these quarrels, there must be a great deal of har- 
mony at bottom or society would simply commit 
suicide. History shows us great periods of peace 
as well as of war and philosophy reveals the fun- 
damental basis upon which both peace and war 
are possible in a social organism. When that 
fundamental basis is attacked society itself be- 
comes impossible and dissolves into an individ- 
ualistic anarchy with the appetites and passions 
of the lower man enthroned as authority. Such 
was the Reign of Terror in France. The attack 
on basic authority put a worse one in its stead 
until basic authority, gathering power, regained 
the mastery. Authority of some sort is a basic, 
inescapable fact. But we speak of it at times 
as being misused. People rebel against it. In 

114 



their reaction they often war against the good as 
well as the bad in the authority. But it all has 
a meaning — the State as "the institute of rights" 
is morally responsible for its acts. It cannot 
overturn its own ethical and religious founda- 
tion. 

Still further to clear the way let us look into the 
expression "equal development of the faculties." 
First of all there can be no mathematical equal- 
ity, and I can see no virtue in equality per se. 
Even supposing equality to be good, how can it 
be maintained? Will not changes upset the 
equality? Nor can we determine a priori any^ 
absolute, material equality. A man that can 
cook a dinner, sail a vessel, run an engine, man- 
age an army and write a treatise on metaphysics 
may be said to possess an equal development of 
the faculties. But even here equality does not 
justify itself, for his skill in cooking might be 
used to disguise a poison, his vessel might be 
used for piracy, his engine to escape with booty, 
the army might be fighting for pay in a bad 
cause, and his metaphysics used to uphold sin. 
Now in what sense can "equal" be applied to the 
faculties? How are the various faculties of the 
"all-round" man equal? Surely only in a figura- 
tive sense, meaning that they are well adapted 
for their purposes, fitted to realize the ends for 
which they aim; and secondly, the "all-round" 
man with his so-called equality must be "square," 
t. e., moral. 

Analysis has thus far brought us to the con- 
ception of purpose as inseparably connected with 

115 



the faculties. A faculty apart from its purpose 
is an abstraction; apart from its moral purpose 
it has no justification. This, true of one faculty, 
is true of all and true of any harmony predicated 
of them. Now we are ready for a constructive ef- 
fort. 

The only harmony worthy of the name is a 
harmony of the lower faculties with the higher. 
The higher faculties direct, control and limit the 
tendencies of the lower. The lower are therefore 
conceived as subordinate, as getting their mean- 
ing and function only in relation to the higher 
which explain and reconcile them. Moral free- 
dom and moral purpose thus determine the scope 
of the appetites, of the faculties of perception, 
reasoning and imagination. The difference be- 
tween the freedom prescribed by morality and 
that of the appetites is the difference between 
"eating to live" and "living to eat." In another 
way this difference is emphasized in Milton's 
apostrophe to wedded love. In nothing short of 
heaven, however, can the ideal harmony be real- 
ized in its complete theoretical and practical ra- 
tionality. For man as finite finds exercise for his 
powers only within a limited and imperfect en- 
vironment, while his higher aims are infinite and 
incapable of finding satisfaction therein. Con- 
sequently even if, subjectively considered, he at- 
tains a harmony guided by moral purpose, yet on 
the practical side, i. e., as an active will express- 
ing itself in conduct, it must contain an element 

116 



of strife because of an unmoral or immoral en- 
vironment under whose conditions that will must 
act if it acts at all. 

The conception of an ideal social state on 
earth comes nearest to giving scope for "a har- 
monious development of all the faculties." Gen- 
eral tendencies toward that state already exist. 
I. Most important is the checking and obliterat- 
ing of personal evil-will by positive punishments ; 
and guiding and enlightening the good-will by 
positive encouragements. 2. Chances for 
evil, i. c, wicked temptations, are to be 
reduced to a minimum by good people co- 
operating, taking precautions to prevent the 
evil will from realizing its purposes. Thus, 
when we delegate our rights into the keeping 
of some one else, let us take some precautions 
to prevent their abuse ; and if he to whom we del- 
egate them has high moral character he will not 
only recognize the justice of our precautions, but 
also will voluntarily offer to take precautions 
both to strengthen his own good will and to sat- 
isfy us of the goodness of his intentions. A case 
suggests itself: A, B and C have certain dealings. 
A and B have mutual rights and duties, but their 
relation to C is largely accidental, i. e., one that 
can be broken without harm. B speaks to C 
of a transaction in which A's rights are neces- 
sarily involved. C suggests completing the 
transaction and B consents. Trouble resulted 
from B and C ignoring A's rights in the case. B 
had a bad motive in the transaction, C supposed 
the contrary. Both A and C were deceived by 

117 



B. B ought to have protected A's rights, but 
would not, and C did not think it necessary. C, 
however, had encouraged B and smoothed the 
way to the transaction. Now had C taken pre- 
caution to protect himself from the possible bad 
motive, and, as it turned out, also actual bad mo- 
tive of B, or had he been thoughtful enough of A 
to have protected him from B's betrayal, all the 
trouble could have been avoided by a few words 
or a simple reference of the matter to A. The 
mutual confidence established by such a plan 
would have well repaid the effort. Besides that, 
B's bad motive would have been discouraged and 
C would not have become an accessory to the 
betrayal. In large stores precautions are taken, 
as, for example, by a checking system, to reduce 
the chances of theft to a minimum. Fire-proof 
dwellings decrease the scope of arson. 3. As far 
as possible, natural conditions must be moralized 
and made servants to man. Control of wind 
power and water power are examples of this; in 
the economic sphere the tendency to substitute 
more equitable exchanges for the natural system 
of driving a good bargain, i. e., "skinning the 
other fellow." 

Even in such an ideal state as that sketched 
by Edward Bellamy, quarrels and personal spites 
could exist. While we can grant Mr. Bellamy 
true in much that he claims about our economic 
system being the cause and condition of discord, 
nevertheless we are still in the realm of the hu- 
man will. Far from being the only cause of the 
evil will, economic conditions are themselves a 

118 



lesult of the greater human will. Consequently 
the removal of evil economic conditions will not 
of necessity obliterate the other modes in which 
the evil will is wont to express itself. Allowing 
then for the possible existence of the evil will in 
our ideal earthly state (perhaps through atavism), 
there will yet be death and accidents and mis- 
takes in judgment. To suppose the opposite 
would make man omniscient. We need not 
speculate which will come first — the omniscience 
of man on earth or the extinction of life thereon. 
Now for a summary of results : 

1. A fundamental moral order is at the basis 
of society. 

2. While it is a presupposition of social exist- 
ence under which faculties of the mind exist, yet 
it is also the goal toward which the faculties 
should be directed in their efforts to harmonize. 
A complete, conscious realization of the moral 
order is the ideal that guides their harmony. 

3. Heaven alone completely fulfils the ideal, 
while a perfect social state comes nearest a possi- 
ble realization on earth. 

An objector may say, "You have not deter- 
mined the particular content of your moral har- 
mony. You do not tell what acts are moral. 
Then, too, each age has put a somewhat different 
content into the moral form. Besides, when you 
have obliterated evil, the race will die of inan- 
ition, for the lack of something to do." Fully to 
answer these objections would require a moral 
philosophy but brief reply is here given: 1. It is 
something to have established a moral order as 

119 



the only basis on which society is possible. Our 
critic admits that much. 2. If the critic means 
what he says, and I assume him sincere, that 
constitutes some content for the moral ideal. 
Telling the truth and honesty are already there. 
As a fact, in the greater part of our doings the 
moral content is already known. It is in the ex- 
ceptional cases that one can not tell what his duty 
is, perhaps owing to their great complexity or 
singularity. The objection is parallel to one 
made to zoology. To be consistent, one would 
refuse to call a lobster an animal because some 
forms of life occupied the borderland between 
the animal and vegetable. Possessing some 
characteristics of both made it doubtful whether 
the forms were really animals or vegetables. For 
the same reason, I might argue that I cannot calf 
my critic a living being because the living shades 
off so gradually into the non-living that one can- 
not tell where the living ends and non-living be- 
gins. Having argued my critic out of living, I 
might conveniently bury him. But let us look 
more closely at his argument. 3. "Not only does 
the moral shade off into the immoral so grad- 
ually that they can't be distinguished, but each 
age gives a somewhat different content to the 
moral form." But no age completely demolishes 
either the moral form or the best part of its con- 
tent whatever it adds to or subtracts from it. It 
were folly to attempt what so many wise men 
have failed to do — to foresee the particular ways 
in which future ages shall manifest their spirit. 



120 



Theft, murder, lying and treason have been 
rather steadily condemned among civilized races. 
While my critic might point to tribes in which 
each of those crimes is practiced, and upheld by 
the sentiment of the people, he then has to prove, 
(a) that the crimes named were committed by 
members of the tribe against one another, (b) 
that the tribe still held together and why it did so, 
(c) that their practices and opinions are at least 
as good as ours. Until these be proved, his il- 
lustration has no bearing on the case. 4. My 
critic does not act on his own theory. If he can 
not distinguish the good from the evil, then he 
has no business to tell us what will happen to the 
race when evil is obliterated. Whatever truth 
there is in his objection is based on an abstract 
view of good and evil. Goodness is so simple in 
this view that living would become monotonous 
were there no evil to contrast with it. It is a 
false view. There is a great deal of variety in 
goodness even now, apart from positive evil. Just 
so in our ideal social state with no positive evil, 
there would be a multitude of ways for doing 
good, and increasing the good already in exist- 
ence, enough variety, in fact, to give spice to 
the most exacting. Good and evil as names 
would doubtless exist as a logical contrast neces- 
sary to give them meaning, just as something 
and nothing, existence and non-existence, sense 
and nonsense. But as a real contrast necessary to 
life and appreciation, there need be no more ma- 
terial content to evil than there is to the term 
nothing. For if the contrast of contraries 



121 



is necessary to life and appreciation, a person 
continually living in a temperature of 90 would 
never feel hot, because he never felt cold. No 
one could feel pleased, unless he had before been 
pained. The best way to enjoy a beautiful gem 
of music would be to stop at a boiler shop on the 
way to the opera, and to appreciate a bath one 
would do well to roll about in the gutter before- 
hand. To turn it about, the thief to appreciate 
his theft should be honest for a while, the tramp 
to appreciate his dirt should get washed now and 
then, and so on. Instead of this contrast of con- 
traries being necessary, there could be, as before 
shown, contrast enough in either term of the 
pair. If not, no final reconciliation between good 
and evil is possible. 

No one can tell how much perception, judg- 
ment, memory, imagination, reasoning, etc., it 
takes to produce harmony of the faculties, 
whether now or in the ideal social state. They 
can not be measured by the quart, gallon, by the 
yard or year. Only a faulty psychology backed 
up by figures of speech could ever suppose the 
powers of the mind subject to quantitative deter- 
mination (by the "how much") or magically 
brought into an equilibrium like a see-saw. A 
faculty, it was stated, could be defined only in re- 
lation to its purpose. Even then no one can tell 
how much purpose is necessary to produce har- 
mony. In the discussion of subjective harmony, 
many purposes of various importance were found 
to be consistent with harmony. Subjective in- 
completeness needing a criterion was referred to 

122 



a moral order to which it must conform in order 
to be justified. The ideal social state furnishes 
us with a clue to a new factor in the harmony. 
Let us apply it to the school. 

A school professing to turn out pupils with a 
complete harmony does an injury. If any pupil 
possess it he is either in the class of dreamers 
ignoring the real world or of the sordid practical 
fellows, all worldly. For a school that does its 
duty well will introduce strife into the harmony. 
No matter how complete his subjective harmony 
may be, the pupil nevertheless has a quarrel with 
the imperfections of the world and the school 
should not forget it. The infinite side of his na- 
ture demands it. If the ideal social state be an 
aim, even though we can but approximately real- 
ize it, then the incorporation of an element of dis- 
cord into the harmony is absolutely necessary; 
for that element of discord means advancement. 
True, it is but the means to the final end, yet so 
long as our finite imperfection lasts, so long 
should the strife last. So long shall we have 
something worth fighting for, something worth 
living for. To give up the fight now will be spir- 
itual stagnation. To state it in a paradox, the 
best kind of harmony and subjective satisfaction 
is that which contains discord and dissatisfaction 
with the wickedness of self and the world. 

To apply results: I. No matter what we teach 
or how much we teach, the harmony of the facul- 
ties defined merely in relation to abstract pur- 
pose can not be determined beforehand and 

123 



stands in no necessary relation to so much arith- 
metic, so much geography, etc., just because they 
may consist with many kinds of harmony. 2. As 
there may exist many purposes in the world 
without conflicting there is no need of absolute 
uniformity in the minds of any two pupils; that 
is to say, subjectively considered, the great dif- 
ferences between pupils may all conform to the 
teacher's purpose; perception or reasoning may 
become more important than imagination or 
imagination may become more valuable than rea- 
soning without breaking up the internal harmony 
of the faculties or thwarting the teacher's pur- 
pose. Some degree of specialization is thus pro- 
vided for and development is given its function. 
Only in one respect can the teacher demand ab- 
solute uniformity — whatever be the faculties of 
the pupil they must conform to the moral order 
typified by the school. Whatever be the sub- 
jective harmony of any pupil, it must be subor- 
dinated to moral purpose as long as he remains 
a pupil. No pupil can be given a right to do 
wrong. 3. The school is to give the pupil ideals, 
or as otherwise stated, to introduce strife into the 
harmony. Then extremes are avoided — unfitness 
for the real world and complete slavery to it. 
Bread and butter philosophy has lately been dic- 
tating a bit too much. 4. Training of the lower 
faculties is scarcely to be considered an end in 
itself; only as it ministers to the higher end can 
it be justified, for the lower faculties receive their 

124 



meaning and explanation only in the higher. 5. 
We found harmony to be justified only as con- 
formity to moral purpose; equal or harmonious 
development to mean well fitted to realize that 
purpose; we found material equality an erro- 
neous conception to apply to the faculties, and 
purposes in their relations to the life of any indi- 
vidual to be indeterminate; consequently the 
school can not guarantee its results. After doing 
its whole duty, it can not tell what use the pupils 
will make of their harmony in after-life. They 
may become immoral; they may, on the other 
hand, guide it along moral lines unforeseen by 
the school. With all the advantages given by his 
education, John may become a rogue; Frank 
may become a great arithmetician, devoting his 
life to the study, without spoiling his harmony 
and conforming to moral purpose, even though 
he use but little his faculty of perception through 
touch and use a great deal his faculty of abstract 
reasoning. But the school can guarantee none 
of these results. It can say, "Both John and 
Frank did well in school. No violation of moral 
purpose was tolerated. We did our whole duty 
by them and they did theirs. Other things equal, 
we send them out into the world with the prob- 
ability that they will do their duty in the world 
also." 

"It is no longer possible to guide school work 
by the needs of the child as an individual," is the 
complaint voiced by a Philadelphia newspaper. 
Similar to this we have more than once heard, 
"The child should be educated along his line of 

125 



least resistance." The harmony theory assumed 
that there is a number of faculties needing to be 
brought out of confusion into "harmonious de- 
velopment." According to the least resistance 
theory, such harmony is not desirable. Natural 
aptitudes for particular activities should be 
strengthened, not sacrificed to harmony. Thus 
are the two theories contradictory. Both spring 
from a mechanical, individualizing psychology; 
the one thinks harmony a good in itself, the other 
thinks specialization a good in itself; the one 
would feed every faculty alike for each is assumed 
equally important, the other would select one 
faculty or a few as being most important accord- 
ing to the individual and give all attention along 
the special line. 

The contradiction between the two theories 
disappears when we go from the mechanical to 
the organic standpoint. A man may be a special- 
ist and yet have what is frequently called a well- 
balanced mind. Nearly every reader knows some 
such persons. Perhaps many a reader has some 
specialty which has not interfered with the har- 
mony of his faculties. But specialization no less 
than harmony must be subordinate to moral law. 
In itself the line of least resistance carries no eth- 
ical justification. A person's line of least resist- 
ance might point downward, consisting of an 
aptitude not desirable, e. g. } a tendency to lie or 
steal and so be subversive to morality. The same 
truth may be seen from another side. Abstractly 
considered, one man's line of least resistance is as 
good as another's. This indifference leaves no 

126 



room for ethical principles. Just so it assumes 
an innate goodness in qualities naturally belong- 
ing to a person. This naturalism (what is natural 
is good) has been sufficiently dealt with else- 
where. So no justification can be given for an 
aptitude that is bad and none for developing an 
aptitude natural or otherwise, if better ones have 
to be sacrificed. Had education always been di- 
rected toward developing a pupil along his line of 
least resistance as it existed, what kind of a world 
would this be now? An unproved assumption is 
beneath the line of least resistance theory, 
namely, the line of least resistance is so distrib- 
uted among the people of the world, that were 
each one developed along that line a good result 
would be produced and possible overdevelop- 
ment would be counterbalanced when the whole 
race was taken into account. This looks danger- 
ously like a pre-established harmony, though one 
would scarcely expect the ghost of Leibnitz to be 
lurking about the arguments of an empirical psy- 
chology. 

The least resistance theory would more likely 
sacrifice social welfare to personal caprices and 
give a death-blow to the public school. Would it 
not lead to private tutoring? Each particular 
child in order to be developed along his line of 
least resistance should have a particular tutor 
whose line of least resistance would be his ability 
to teach that particular child. We are still in the 
realm of the human will and no mathematical de- 
termination of the line of least resistance would 
be possible. Even if determined some other way 

127 



no guarantee could be given that it would remain 
the line of least resistance through life. Carried 
to its extreme it would fit a man only to fit in a 
special place. The testimony of the history of ed- 
ucation negatives subordination to the line of 
least resistance as found existing. That testimony 
establishes the primacy of the human will and if 
it means anything, man has recognized a moral 
obligation in education, the obligation to make 
the natural line of least resistance become a moral 
line of least resistance. 

A school may develop a pupil along his line of 
least resistance not because it is the line, but be- 
cause it conforms to the purpose of the school. 
To illustrate: A pupil with a talent for drawing 
is encouraged by the praises bestowed on his 
work; adequate scope is afforded by the period 
alloted to drawing in the program. But cer- 
tainly it is not the duty of a public school teacher 
as such, to provide special work for that pupil or 
to make the program conform to him. In so far 
as that talented pupil needs special work is a mat- 
ter for special schools, for his parents and for 
himself after he has performed his duty as a pub- 
lic school pupil. During school hours he can not 
be permitted to draw when he should be reading 
or studying geography or history. Try to apply 
the line of least resistance theory to public school 
work; apply it to every pupil; apply it to every 
teacher — how much public school would be left? 
If the talented pupil's aptitude is caricature, no 
allowance can be made for it unless it is provided 
for in the school program. Imagine, however, 

128 



a school that recognized the right of such a pupil 
to caricature his classmates. You doubtless see 
how it conflicts with the fundamental principles 
upon which school work is based. If carpentry 
or blacksmithing is not taught in a public school, 
pupils whose line of least resistance is along those 
lines can expect to have no provision made for 
them. How absurd, too, would it be to encour- 
age a pupil whose line of least resistance con- 
sisted in inventing excuses for lateness, truancy 
and bad conduct. 

In response to the demand for utility and spe- 
cialization certain special schools have sprung up. 
These have their functions and are not necessarily 
bad. They may, however, conflict with the pur- 
poses of the other schools, as is the case in Phil- 
adelphia. I have in mind two schools which 
upon certain afternoons each week draw upon 
the regular schools for pupils. Such pupils lose 
the regular school work for what they aim to 
gain by the special school work. I am concerned 
but little with the particular acts and results 
therein involved, but rather with the principles 
implied and acted on. The schools are part of 
the public school system. In one the pupils are 
taught drawing, clay-modeling and wood-carv- 
ing; in the other, elementary manual training is 
the purpose. 

As stated, chosen pupils lose the afternoon ses- 
sion of the regular school; they are not counted 
absent, however, if they attend the special school. 
Now what is implied in this differentiation? Is 
the principle on which it is based a good one? 

129 



Out of a grammar school of 400 pupils 
let us say about 25 pupils are absent 
one afternoon a week to go to the 
special school. Unless the special school 
give the pupil more value for his afternoon 
than is given by the regular school, they are en- 
tirely without justification. But if the pupil does 
get more in one afternoon at the special school 
than he gets in one afternoon at the regular 
school, why should he not get more in five after- 
noons at the special school than in five at the 
regular school? The special school is an implicit 
criticism of the regular school; it implies that the 
regular school is not meeting the needs of the 
pupils whom it sends to the special school. By 
definition special schools would have a different 
purpose from the regular school. Chosen pupils 
are given a right to absent themselves from the 
regular school in order to attend a special school 
whose purpose it is to meet the needs which the 
regular school does not. What are those needs? 
Who are the pupils? What further follows from 
the principle which opposes the purpose of the 
special school to the purpose of the public school? 

1. Suppose any pupil of the regular school may 
go to the special school. Say three are selected 
at random out of a class of forty pupils or say the 
first three that apply for the privilege. Now if 
thus it be a matter of indifference to the author- 
ities, why would not the entire class get more 
value at the special school than at the regular 
school? If right one afternoon a week, why not 
all? Should one say there are not special schools 

130 



enough, the answer is easy — if they be right, they 
ought to be established in sufficient numbers. 
Under our first supposition, as the special school 
meets the needs of all the pupils, then the regular 
school does not, as it is defined as not meeting 
the needs which the special school satisfies. The 
moral purpose of the regular school thus fails to 
justify itself in comparison with that of the spe- 
cial school. This first view gives no principle of 
selection among pupils. If one has the right, so 
have all. The special school suits any. To claim 
that honor, the special school must aim to give 
a broad culture appropriate to a great phase of 
thought and activity represented by the subjects 
it teaches. But when it reaches that stage, it has 
brought about its own contradiction, for it ceases 
to be special and takes on a function appropriate 
to the regular school. Will the logic of history 
bring about a union of the two, by the special 
school being indissolubly linked with the regular 
school by a unity of purpose? Will we come to 
see that its scope can not be sharply limited and 
its purpose viewed as indifferent or even opposed 
to that of the regular school, as we have come to 
see the interdependence of universal and partic- 
ular, and the futility of sundering the sciences 
from metaphysics? If so, then branches taught 
in the special school will come to be viewed as 
part of a greater whole. The special school will 
get its philosophic setting apart from which it 
can not be understood. Pupils taught therein 
and taught properly will thus be required to 
know not merely the special branches, but also 



the general knowledge co-ordinating them with 
a theory of life. The artist of to-day clearly to 
understand his function and the condition of art 
of his own time must really study art in history, 
why certain types appeared during certain 
epochs, the causes and conditions making them 
possible and leading to their downfall. But to 
know these is to study the ethics, political econ- 
omy and religion of bygone ages, in short, a 
philosophy of history. 

2. Suppose the special school gets only pupils 
bright in the branches taught therein. These pu- 
pils, it assumes, should be developed along their 
line of least resistance. That course, it thinks, 
will be better for the pupil and the world; other- 
wise it would be indefensible. But it can not be 
proved beforehand whether the pupil and the 
world are really better. It is quite possible to 
conceive a pupil whose line of least resistance, 
while not immoral, may yet be such as to lead to 
a mere subjective harmony and produce lunacy; 
and in the world there might be too many spe- 
cialists. But if we have a special school for those 
bright in drawing, clay-modeling, wood-carving, 
carpentry or blacksmithing, why should we not 
have a special school for the pupil with a special 
taste for history, language, music or mathemat- 
ics? If the line of least resistance be good, why 
not let everyone enjoy it? The legitimate conse- 
quence is the extension of the special school, be- 
cause in allowing it to take the pupil from the 
regular school one afternoon a week, we have 

132 



given special needs of pupils the right to be rec- 
ognized as the guide of school practice. 

This second view closely corresponds to the 
utilitarian view of Mr. Spencer. Special schools 
teach practical arts, useful in business, giving 
knowledge supposedly favorable to money-get- 
ting and aiding to procure the necessaries of life. 
On this ground, special schools can be justified 
only if the majority of pupils in after-life do 
really use the knowledge to make a living. Only 
the statistician could give us data for deciding 
this part of the question. In the absence of data 
we refrain from expressing an opinion. 

The fundamental assumption on which this 
view rests is — what is useful is good. Should 
that principle be made the guide of school prac- 
tice? In the narrow sense of the word, utility 
can not be made the guide of school practice, 
has already been pointed out, bad uses of things 
and of knowledge are possible. Even within 
moral lines there are so many useful things to be 
attended to that mere utility gives us no ground 
for preferring one rather than another. Thus 
were we referred to a criterion of purposes and 
found that on the whole the regular school system 
embodied the correct principles — culture and dis- 
cipline as the chief guides. Mere utility was sub- 
ordinate. In the highest sense of the word, util- 
ity becomes identical with culture and discipline, 
but then it is not the guide because it is utility, 
but because it conforms to the higher guides with 
which it has become identical. If mere utility 
should be supreme, what a transformation it 

133 



would work in the curriculum! Pupils would be 
taught subjects wholly conformable to some art 
or trade or department of the commercial world. 
This would necessitate special schools altogether. 
Ordinary folk by using their eyes a little can see 
for themselves how numerous are dry goods 
stores, grocery stores and saloons. Why not 
have a special school for each of the correspond- 
ing occupations? How probably useful it would 
be! Why not at the beginning educate Johnny 
for a coal dealer, Frank for an engineer, William 
for a broker, and so on? Such a plan sounds the 
death knell of the regular school because the 
regular school is opposed to mere utility. 

3. Suppose the special school gets only those 
pupils deficient in the branches taught therein. 
Harmony is here assumed to be desirable, some- 
what after the fashion of the deacon's master- 
piece: 

"Fur," said the Deacon, "it's mighty plain 

Thut the weakes' place must stan' the strain; 
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 
Is only jest 
T' make that place as strong as the rest." 

Faulty psychology is at the bottom of this 
view. Thus, deficiency in drawing would indi- 
cate an ill-balanced mind. If Johnny be weak in 
arithmetic, it would mean a corresponding weak- 
ness in the mental power which arithmetic is sup- 
posed to train. Hence the inference — develop a 
pupil's weak powers. But this assumes a certain 
balance of powers as normal. Thus stated, this 
view is open to objections made against abstract 

134 



harmony and mechanical psychology. A pupil 
may be a poor arithmetician without being defi- 
cient in reasoning power other than the kind 
which arithmetic is supposed to train. The same 
argument works as well for any special kind of 
subject and any special kind of corresponding 
mental power. For there is no such absolute re- 
lation between the two as mechanical psychology 
presupposes. 

If a special school is established for pupils de- 
ficient in drawing, clay-modeling, wood-carving 
and carpentry, why not a special school for pupils 
deficient in arithmetic, music, history or geogra- 
phy? Where will this specializing process end? 
Why not carry it even within the special schools 
already established? Why have a regular school 
at all? Can a regular school be justified if the 
special weaknesses of the pupil be the guide of 
his course of study ? No ; for a regular school as 
such is guided not by the child's needs as an indi- 
vidual, but by his needs as a pupil, as a member 
of a class, a part of an organism — school, city and 
nation. Whatever be his special weaknesses, 
they cannot become the guide of our general 
school practices; only his weaknesses as a pupil 
can do that. Consequently the school can say, 
"Whatever be your special needs, we can de- 
mand that your weaknesses measure up at least 
to our standard. Our standard is graded on gen- 
eral deficiencies of human nature, on the needs of 
the child as a pupil. Your special scrength may 
carry you above the standard, your special weak- 
nesses may keep you below it. But the regular 

135 



school is obliged neither to create opportunities 
to make your strength greater nor to lower its 
standard to the level of your weaknesses." 

Now this third view in approximating the con- 
ception of harmony and antagonizing the line of 
least resistance, approximates the conception of 
culture and antagonizes that of mere utility. Thus 
the special school might justify itself because of 
the culture it gives in overcoming weaknesses. 
But so does the regular school overcome weak- 
nesses. On this ground we get back to our old 
question, Which culture is worth more, that of 
the special school or of the regular school? An 
identity of purpose is recognized, namely, cul- 
ture. But what kind? When the special school 
gives the same kind of culture as the regular 
school, when it gives a greater value than the reg- 
ular school, the special school will cease to be spe- 
cial. As long as it remains special, its purpose 
must be subordinate or supplementary to that of 
the regular school and it should not be permitted 
to take time which has been set upon as properly 
belonging to the regular school. When the spe- 
cial school does take the pupil from the regular 
school at a time when he ought to be at the reg- 
ular school, there is violated the rights and du- 
ties which, we have elsewhere claimed, answer 
the question, What is it really to be a pupil? 

The state establishes special schools; parents 
allow their children to attend; the children are 
willing; the special school authorities are anxious 
to get them; and the regular school authorities 
sanction it. A determined opposition on the part 

136 



of any of these would cure the ills resulting from 
splitting up the time. Certainly the State could 
abolish the special school; but this is scarcely de- 
sirable. We decidedly do not agree with those 
extreme individualists who would reduce the 
functions of the State to zero, for then the State 
would have charge of no educational institutions 
at all. Grant the State the right to establish gen- 
eral schools and it looks as if we have given it 
the right to establish special schools also. We 
are not at present interested in the question 
whether this is not a step toward socialism. We 
do insist, however, upon having as clear a 
definition as possible of the respective limits and 
functions of the special and general school. 

As the special schools mentioned are situated 
at some distance from the regular school, some 
parents might object to sending their children to 
the special school on account of the extra time, 
labor, expense and exposure; but I have never 
heard of a special school suffering much in those 
ways. Parents can scarcely be expected to solve 
the problems of the school. When they have 
solved the problems of the home, they will have 
done much indirectly to solve the problems of the 
school. Nor can we expect much help from the 
pupils. Some few of them may refuse to go to 
the special school. Usually there are always 
enough willing to go. There may also be much 
question whether the pupil should be given the 
right to decide for himself concerning his attend- 
ance at the special school. Is the pupil fit to pass 
judgment upon his own needs and abilities? Even 

137 



if so, does not his judgment have to be submitted 
to the approval of the school authorities? 

As the authorities of the special school can 
scarcely be expected to limit their purposes, only 
the authorities of the general school are left. 
Upon them is the chief responsibility. Whether 
the bright pupils or dull ones are selected, final 
decision should rest with the authorities. If pu- 
pils must be taken from the regular school during 
school hours, let it be conditional — if any pupil 
fails to keep up with the work of the regular 
school, he will be forthwith deprived of the priv- 
ilege of attending the special school. Authorities 
may, of course, be pardoned if now and then they 
make an unintentional mistake, such as sending 
a pupil undeserving the privilege. Care is needed 
in selecting pupils and extra work is put upon the 
teachers. Such pupils must be kept track of, not 
only to find out whether they abuse their priv- 
ileges, but also to see whether they keep up with 
their classmates and make up what they really 
do lose when away. Once in a while they may 
disturb the class in the regular school, as on a 
one-session day, when they leave the room an 
hour earlier than the rest so that they may get 
to the special school on time. Their absence if 
the class is small is not as encouraging as their 
presence would be to the other pupils. In any 
case, a distinction is created within the class and 
at present a distinction whose meaning is not 
altogether good. 

In the end, all things considered, the best cul- 
ture and the highest utility are identical. In that 

138 



highest sense, utility comprehends past, present 
and future; in a word, it becomes inseparable 
from final purpose. Mere utility appearing his- 
torically as a foe to teleology, in the end will be- 
come its steadfast friend. 

Throughout this book I have ventured to urge 
a return to first principles. In common with other 
departments of literature, works on education 
are almost innumerable, and in the enormous 
mass of methods recommended for this, that or 
the other reason, first principles are apt to be 
buried out of sight. Nor can we forget the vague 
character of education as a science by reason of 
its recency and the complicated data with which 
it deals. In the words of Professor Knight, "Cer- 
tainly we at present stand upon a small (occa- 
sionally sunlit) promontory, stretching out from 
the land of primal mystery whence we came, into 
the ocean of a still vaster ignorance, over which 
we must set out; and to many minds there is an 
equal fascination in the girdle of darkness, and 
in the zone of light." 



i39 



CONTENTS. 

Chapter I. 

Historical Developments. 

Influence of the French Revolution — Both good and 
bad — The fundamental assumption — Disproof of it — 
Evolution of man — Unique meaning of childhood to- 
day. 

Chapter II. 

Evolution and School Method. 

Schopenhauer and Leibnitz on the goodness of the 
world — Subordination of natural to moral necessary 
— Danger in any other plan — What kind of freedom? 
— Evolution needs a new interpretation — What is 
the child? — What is the adult? — The teacher is a 
better being than the child according to evolution. 

Chapter III. 
The Child vs. The Teacher. 

Some reminiscences — The teacher responsible for 
everything accordingly — Child worship in school — 
Some misfit children — Loss caused thereby — Prof. 

140 



Schoenrich on American children — Relativity of re- 
spect — Nature of authority — Duty of pupil — Pesta- 
lozzi — Plan indicating remedies needed. 



Chapter IV. 
The Futility of Reasoning. 



weaken authority — Appealing to honor, duty un- 
satisfactory — Love, kindness and interest are not 
cure-alls — Preparation of lessons — How the teacher 
may be at the mercy of the pupil. 



Chapter V. 
Punishments. 

Nature of crime and punishment according to Hegel 
— Laxity in respect for law — Fear as a motive to 
good conduct — Whipping — Its adaptation to certain 
pupils — Its historic function overlooked — Cost of 
abolishing varied means of punishment — Church, State 
and School founded on authority — Teaching lessons 
the chief active work of the teacher — Acts of dis- 
order should be settled in school and at once — 
Suspension — Its disadvantages — A relic of greater au- 
thority — Detention after school — An act of authority 
— Its disadvantages — What causes a quiet class ? 

Chapter VI. 

How? 

No theoretical or practical justification to naturalism 
— Co-operation by all hands — Efficient and varied 

141 



punishments — Unity of educational system demanded 
— Advantages of these recommendations. 



Chapter VII. 
Teachers. 

Mr. White's explanation of the failure of teachers — 
Criticism thereof — Meaning of attending school — 
Child-study. 

Chapter VIII. 

Various School Offenses. 

The test — Talking in school— Paper on the floor- 
Throwing — One way of obviating difficulties — Have 
a watcher in the room — Too much for one person — 
Subordination of individual to the class is the ideal 
— Summary of principles — Should the teacher inter- 
fere with personal affairs of pupils — Two plans con- 
trasted — Some advice — How long? 

Chapter IX. 
Conclusion. 

Man, the world and God — Return to first principles — 
Evidences of the return — The last word of natur- 
alism. 

Herbert Spencer' s • « Education. ' ' 

What knowledge is of most worth ? — Does decoration 
precede dress ? — Does the ornamental come before the 
useful ? — Mr. Spencer* s claims false — Disproved by 

142 



history of education and rest on shallow philosophy — 
Scientific knowledge not enough to meet all our 
needs — Mr. Spencer' s ethics used against his condem 
nation of the classics — His criticisms not characteristic 
of classical knowledge alone, but apply as well to 
scientific — Practical purposes can not be made the 
aim of the school — What is complete living ? — Five 
classes of activities constituting complete living — 
Too complete as forms of life are themselves in 
need of criticism — Mr. Spencer' s rosy outlook not so 
rosy after all — Less selfishness as well as economic 
improvement needed — Science the cure-all — What 
kind of value we get in science — Subjects in Mr. 
Spencer's curriculum — Fallacy that knowledge of a 
fact issues in use of the fact — Scientific laws and 
principles formal, determination resting with human 
will — Mere utility of a fact does not necessarily imply 
a need to know its cognate science — Intrinsic value 
of knowledge criticised — Metaphysics should be put 
in the curriculum — Society on an ethical not a 
scientific basis (in the narrow sense) — Mr. Spencer's 
claim for descriptive sociology opens the door to the 
languages he excluded — " Science" used in two senses, 
broad and narrow — Separation between memory and 
understanding can not be maintained — Misses the 
"soul of truth'' in his opponents' claims — Science 
and language have a common root — Painting — Moral 
value of the sciences — Science has no monopoly on 
moral discipline — Ditto religious discipline — Mr. 
Spencer a representative of 19th century individualism 
and typical of the empirical method of English phi- 
losophy — Fruits of Mr. Spencer's " Education " — His 
charges against the past too sweeping — Charges 
against parents — Mr. Spencer's question part of a 

143 



greater one — A pessimistic criticism — A prophecy — 
Summary. 

The School and the Criminal. 

The flood of knowledge has not put out the volcanoes 
of crime — Knowledge of righteousness need not issue 
in right conduct — School does not create the will it 
aims to shape — Where the school is to blame — School 
crippled by lax social conditions and attacks upon 
home, property and authority — A false view of the 
school — School but little to blame for crime. 

School Supplies. 

Waste entailed — Who shall replace misused books — A 
higher standard needed. 

Darwinism and the Teacher. 

Natural selection unmoral — Its false application to life 
in general — To the teacher in particular — Result. 

Harmony vs. Line of Least Resistance. 

A recipe — A false analogy — Three kinds of harmony 
illustrated — Harmony not its own justification — Error 
in the three kinds — Ethical purpose left out — A sup- 
posed criticism answered — Equal development of the 
faculties — Its meaning — A summary of results — Re- 
construction — Lower faculties subordinated to higher 
in a unity aiming to realize a moral purpose — The 
ideal social state — Edward Bellamy's mistake — Sum- 
mary — Criticism of objections — Pure subjective har- 
mony incomplete points to a moral order as an objec- 
tive correlate, while the ideal social state demands the 

144 



embodiment of strife into the harmony as a factor 
making for improvement — Results applied to the 
school — 
Specialization along the line of least resistance — Springs 
from false psychology — Specialization must be subor- 
dinated to moral law — Its philosophic assumption — 
What specialization means when applied to pupils — 
Certain special schools — The principles upon which 
they work — Criticism thereof — Responsibility for 
special schools — In the end culture and utility are 
identical — Return to first principles — Vague character 
of the science of education. 



145 



SOME APPROPRIATE QUOTATIONS. 

Special acknowledgment is here made of the 
personal permission given by Prof. Robert Ellis 
Thompson to use material selected from his 
"Elements of Political Economy" and 'The Di- 
vine Order of Human Society." Written per- 
mission has been given by Professors Royce, Ely 
and Watson to use selections from the works of 
which they are respectively the authors. Charles 
Scribner's Sons, Scott, Foresman and Company. 
D. Appleton and Company and the American 
Book Company have given permission to use 
selections from books published by them and 
mentioned herein. 

Authors quoted herein are not to be viewed as 
responsible for my opinions, though I must 
gratefully acknowledge the help I gained from 
their works. 

Our science considers man as existing in 
society; we find him, indeed, nowhere else. The 
old lawyers and political philosophers talked of 
a state of nature, a condition of savage isolation, 
out of which men emerged by the social contract 
through which society was first constituted. But 
no one else has any news from that country. — 
Prof. R. E. Thompson's "Political Economy," 
p. 13. See also pages 17 to 20 and 223. (Porter 
& Coates.) 

The history of human economy is the story of 
man's transition from the savage's subjection to 

146 



nature, to the citizen's mastery of her forces. — 
Ibid., p. 29. 

Natural rights of individuals have no existence 
in any real sense except in society itself, and 
wherever the well-being of society demands it, 
they must give way. — Ibid., p. 224. 

There is in man a higher or spiritual nature 
which education is to awaken into life and call 
forth into activity and vigor; while there is also 
in man a lower or animal nature by which he 
must not be governed and which must be 
brought under restraint and discipline. — Ibid., p. 
368. 

Less can be said for the quality than for the 
quantity of the education given by the public 
schools. Indeed we cannot too heartily recog- 
nize the fact that education is yet in an experi- 
mental stage among us, and that beyond the 
clear duty of teaching a few of the first and plain- 
est elements of learning, everything else is open 
to question . . . Education has been talked of 
as if there were something magical in the contact 
of a young mind with a series of school books 
and of teachers. But the magical results have 
not been forthcoming. — Ibid., p. 373. 

It is universally acknowledged that our pres- 
ent curriculum, if not already badly congested, is 
likely soon to become so. Subject after sub- 
ject has been added, not from any demonstrated 
pedagogical need, but in obedience to popular 
demands or to the professional zeal of specialists. 
—Prof. DeGarmo's "Herbart and the Herbart- 
ians," pp. 117-118. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 

147 



Now, if there is any such thing as a good old 
way in nature or in society, the man has never yet 
appeared who discovered it. There is none. — 
Prof. R. T. Ely's "Introduction to Political 
Economy," p. 35. (Hunt & Eaton, 1889.) Prof. 
Ely has informed me that a new edition of this 
work is soon to appear. 

The contradiction between things as they are 
and our social ideal is painful. — Ibid., p. 65. 

Economic freedom must be regarded as 
merely relative. It has been absolute only in that 
condition of anarchy in which savages have lived 
previous to organized government. — Ibid., p. 71. 

Freedom is negative. . . . Absence of re- 
straint in itself can hardly be called a good in 
itself. It may be a curse or a blessing. . . . 
Children are not fit for it, because under the con- 
trolling influence of a higher authority their de- 
velopment can be better secured. — Ibid., p. 74. 

Philosophers of the latter part of the eigh- 
teenth century assumed the natural equality of 
all men, and held that oppressive inequalities 
were the result of legal institutions. It has be- 
come evident, however, that their assumptions 
were not valid. — Ibid., p. yj. 

When we come to speak of the disadvantages 
of the modern system of freedom, that is to say, 
of competition, it occurs to us that the moral 
atmosphere of a race-course is not a wholesome 
one. — Ibid., p. 83. 

Elsewhere Prof. Ely states that our return in 
political economy is in some important ways a 

148 



return to the ideas of Aristotle. In his "Politics" 
Aristotle says, "Man is naturally a political ani- 
mal. . . . For man, as in his condition of com- 
plete development, i. e., in the State, he is the 
noblest of all animals, so apart from law and 
justice he is the vilest of all." — Pages 5 and 7 of 
Welldon's translation. (Macmillan & Co.) 

Prof. Adamson summarizes Fichte's opinion 
of his own time : The age appeared to him, in its 
lack of devotion to general interests, in its cold 
individualism, mechanical statecraft and selfish 
morality, the condition of completed sinfulness. — 
"Fichte," p. 80. (Wm. Blackwood & Sons.) 

1. Coming from the hand of the Author of all 
things, everything is good; in the hands of man, 
everything degenerates. — Rousseau's "Emile." 
(D. C. Heath & Co.) 

2. Let us follow nature, who has given shame 
to man for his scourge, and let the heaviest part 
of the punishment be the infamy attending it. — 
Montesquieu's "The Spirit of Laws." 

3. The source of man's unhappiness is his 
ignorance of nature. — "The System of Nature" 
by Mirabaud (Baron d'Holbach). 

4. The remedies for these evils must be sought 
in nature herself. — Ibid. 

5. Man never deceives himself but when he 
neglects to return back to nature to consult her 
laws, to call experience to his aid. — Ibid. 

These five quotations show the extent to 
which nature worship was carried toward the end 
of the eighteenth century. Our own Thomas 
Jefferson was greatly influenced by their ideas. 

149 



He thought government a necessary evil and 
therefore the best government was that which 
governed least. Shelley's "Queen Mab" embodies 
these thoughts in poetical form, containing un- 
stinted praise for "unerring nature" and un- 
merciful denunciations of kings, priests and law- 
yers. Great as Herbert Spencer undoubtedly is, 
yet how thoroughly he seems under the notion 
that what is natural, is good, especially in his 
"Education," chapter III, though that fiction was 
certainly old enough to die long before Mr. 
Spencer wrote. The notion was popular among 
the Stoics for we find Marcus Aurelius writing, 
"Nothing is evil that is according to nature," 
though with the Stoic, nature gets a deeper 
meaning than Mr. Spencer gives it, for it is not 
merely a world of order, but one governed by 
reason. — R. L. 

For a masterly criticism of the notion of a 
social contract see Prof. John Watson's "He- 
donistic Theories," especially the chapter on 
Hobbes. 

What are these natural laws of the socio-econ- 
omic organism? Let some one enumerate them. 
—Prof. R. T. Ely's "Introduction to Political 
Economy," p. 124. (Hunt & Eaton.) 

The multitude of machines of human invention 
owe all their value to the laws of nature, but 
those laws alone would never have produced one 
of them. — Prof. Borden P. Bowne's "Meta- 
physics," p. 269. (American Book Co.) For a 
detailed discussion of the metaphysical notions 

150 



underlying the conception of nature, see same 
work, chapter IV. See also J. S. Mill's "Three 
Essays on Religion." 

Besides that which really is, reflection must 
have reference to that which ought to be. . . . 
That much which actually happens ought not to 
happen, has been the common belief of mankind 
in all ages. Nor does that skilful apologizing for 
the laws of physical and psychical existence, 
which the scientific spirit affects, succeed in driv- 
ing this belief from the human mind. On the 
contrary, so confident do men in general con- 
tinue, of their ability to distinguish the sphere of 
actuality from the sphere of the ideal, that they 
without hesitation pronounce judgment against 
Nature herself. — Prof. G. T. Ladd's "Introduc- 
tion to Philosophy," p. 288. (Chas. Scribner's 
Sons.) See same writer's "Philosophy of Mind" 
for a strong argument against "psychology with- 
out a soul." Also Prof. Bowne's "Metaphysics," 

P. 348. 

The fiction of the political writers of the last 
century concerning an original social compact 
whereby society was first constituted is utterly 
groundless. — Prof. Bowne's "Principles of 
Ethics," p. 251. (Am. Book Co.) 

Subordination to the common good is not a 
necessary evil; in its idea it is not an evil at all, 
but an incarnation of beneficent righteousness. — 
Ibid., p. 252. 

Ethics can recognize no arbitrary, irrational 
and immoral freedom on the part of any one. It 

151 



is ethically absurd to set up a claim to a right to 
do wrong. — Ibid., p. 256. 

When we follow the doctrine of evolution to 
its economical, ethical and political conclusions, 
we find it teaching freedom of contract and free- 
dom of trade in economics, but denying freedom 
of the will in ethics; condemning the individual 
to inactivity in self-improvement but urging him 
to activity in self-indulgence; demonstrating that 
man's will is the slave of the greater inclination, 
but anathematizing the attempts of government 
to control this inclination. So that its teaching 
may be summed up in this: In industry or the 
struggle for wealth, absolute freedom ; in govern- 
ment or social regulations, the most freedom 
possible; but in ethics or the struggle for self- 
improvement, no freedom whatever. There is a 
suspicious inconsistency about this teaching, 
which is conspicuous in the fruit it bears; for its 
chief apostle, starting from this theory of evolu- 
tion, has demonstrated the wickedness of free 
hospitals, free libraries and free schools. — Prof. 
Edmond Kelly's "Justus-" 

Speaking of children's home training given by 
the mother, Herbert Spencer says, "Deeds which 
she thinks it desirable to encourage, she gets 
performed by threats and bribes, or by exciting a 
desire for applause: considering little what the 
inward motive may be, so long as the outward 
conduct conforms : and thus cultivating hypocrisy 
and fear and selfishness, in place of good feeling. 
While insisting on truthfulness she constantly 
sets an example of untruth, by threatening 

152 



penalties which she does not inflict." — Chapter I, 
"Education." 

The decline of authority, whether papal, philo- 
sophic, kingly or tutorial, is essentially one phe- 
nomenon. — Ibid., chap. II. 

The suppression of every error is commonly 
followed by a temporary ascendancy of the con- 
trary one. . . . As, further it usually happens, 
that after one of these reactions the next advance 
is achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist 
errors. — Ibid., chap. II. 

The education of the child must accord both 
in mode and arrangement with the education of 
mankind as considered historically. — Ibid., chap. 
II. 

There is much reason to doubt whether Mr. 
Spencer adequately interprets the meaning of the 
foregoing sentence. — R. L. 

Do not expect from a child any great amount 
of moral goodness. During early years every 
civilized man passes through that phase of char- 
acter exhibited by the barbarous race from which 
he is descended. — Ibid., chap. III. 

Hence the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving, 
to lying, so general among children. . . . The 
popular idea that children are 'innocent' ... is 
totally false in so far as it refers to evil impulses. 
—Ibid., chap. III. 

No punishment, then, can be justified unless it 
be essentially just. If society defends itself the 
defence must be just. The root idea of punish- 
ment, then, is retribution; and any attempt to 
escape it only the more certainly brings us back 

153 



to it. — Prof. Bowne's "Principles of Ethics," p. 
274. (Am. Book Co.) 

We are not concerned to save the lives of 
assassins if thereby the lives of honest men are 
directly or indirectly imperilled. — Ibid., p. 276. 

Social interests and those of the law-abiding 
citizen are first. . . . We must be on our guard 
against the snivelling of the sentimentalist and 
the scruples of the closet moralist. — Ibid., pp. 
277-278. 

Besides the knowledge we have of Tightness 
and wrongness as qualities of actions, we have 
the knowledge of duty, obligation or oughtness, 
as a condition of personal activity. The general 
conception of obligation is subjection of person- 
ality to moral law. The measure of this obliga- 
tion is therefore found in the full application of 
the whole law to the whole life. — Prof. Henry 
Calderwood's "Handbook of Moral Philosophy," 
p. 88. (Macmillan & Co.) 

The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal 
was never yet occupied by man. — Carlyle's 
"Sartor Resartus." 

American and English ideas of education are 
now unquestionably adjusted to a theory of mind 
that regards our mental constitution from aggre- 
gative rather than from organic standpoints. The 
mind, according to this theory, is an aggregation 
of faculties; it is the sum of what we call sense- 
perception, memory, imagination, reason, feeling, 
choice, volition and the like. — Prof. DeGarmo's 
"Herbart and the Herbartians," p. 23. (Chas. 
Scribner's Sons.) 

i54 



Psychology is too frequently only an inventory 
of certain so-called "faculties of the mind," such 
as the five senses, imagination, conception, rea- 
soning, etc. — Preface to Dr. Wm. T. Harris's 
"Psychologic Foundations of Education." (D. 
Appleton and Co.) 

Psychology recommended for teachers has 
been mostly of an individualistic character, the 
principle of participation in spiritual life being 
ignored. Hence all allusion to the psychology of 
society, of nations, of institutions, and especially 
of art and religion, has been omitted. — Ibid., 
preface. 

He that spareth the rod hateth his own son: 
but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. — 
Proverbs, xiii, 24. 

Chasten thy son while yet there is hope and let 
not thy soul spare for his crying. — Ibid., xix, 
18. 

Even a child is known by his doings whether 
his work be pure, and whether it be right. — Ibid., 
xx, 11. 

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; 
but the rod of correction shall drive it far from 
him. — Ibid., xxii, 15. 

Withhold not correction from the child ; for u 
thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die. 

Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt 
deliver his soul from hell. — Ibid., xxiii, 13, 14. 

The rod and reproof give wisdom. — Ibid., 
xxix, 15. 

On corporal punishments, see Rosenkranz's 
"Philosophy of Education," pp. 40-42. 

i55 



According to the school laws of Pennsylvania, 
"The teacher should govern his school by ap- 
peals to the reason and better feelings of his 
pupils if possible. But a teacher in the common 
schools stands in place of a parent to a pupil, and 
may administer correction to him under the same 
restrictions as in the case of a parent. 

"The right of a teacher to inflict such punish- 
ment is founded upon the necessity of the case 
and not upon statute. It is absolutely necessary 
that good order should be maintained in the 
schools, and that all proper rules, regulations and 
commands of the teacher should be strictly and 
promptly obeyed. Hence a necessity exists for 
sufficient power to enforce this duty, and therefor 
it is held that the teacher may inflict such rea- 
sonable corporal punishment upon the pupil as 
the parent might inflict for a similar cause." — 
Page 137, "School Laws and Decisions," issue 
of 1899. 

All instruction starts from the inequality be- 
tween those who possess knowledge and ability 
and those who have not yet obtained them. — 
Rosenkranz's "Philosophy of Education," p. 
186. (D. Appleton & Co.) 

A mental feeling connecting itself with pure" 
idea of duty is the essence of Conscience; though 
in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, 
the simple fact is in general all encrusted over 
with collateral associations, derived from sym- 
pathy, from love and still more from fear. — J. S. 
Mill's "Utilitarianism." 

156 



It is the duty of parents to preserve their child ; 
it is also their duty to spare and favor its free- 
dom; hence in so far as the latter might hurt the 
former, it is their duty to subordinate the child's 
freedom to their highest end in the child. — 
Fichte's "Science of Ethics," p. 350. Trans- 
lated by A. E. Kroeger. (D. Appleton and Co.) 

It is the duty of the parents to restrict the free- 
dom of the children, in so far as its use might be 
injurious to their education. — Ibid., p. 352. 

If no other means can be found to subject 
children to the end of education than compulsion, 
the parents have the right of compulsion. — Ibid., 

P- 352. 

It is a very false maxim, which, like various 
other evils, we owe to a prevailing eudacmonism 
that we should make our children do our behests 
through rational argument and according to their 
own insight. Besides other reasons of its wrong- 
ness, it involves, moreover the absurdity of as- 
suming that the child has a good deal more rea- 
son than we have ourselves; since even grown 
persons act mostly from inclinations and not 
from rational grounds. — Ibid., p. 354. 

All men who know themselves are conscious 
that this tendency (to degenerate), deep-rooted 
and active, exists within their nature. Theologi- 
cally, it is described as a gravitation, a bias 
toward evil. The Bible view is that man is con- 
ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. And ex- 
perience tells him that he will shape himself into 
further sin and ever deepening iniquity without 
the smallest effort, without the least intending it, 

i57 



and in the most natural way in the world if he 
simply let his life run. — Sir Henry Drummond's 
"Natural Law in the Spiritual World," p. 91. 
(Altemus.) 

There is a natural principle in man lowering 
him, deadening him, pulling him down by inches 
to the mere animal plane, blinding reason, sear- 
ing conscience, paralyzing will. — Ibid., p. 96. 

Proved by results, it is surely already decided 
that on merely natural lines moral perfection is 
unattainable. — Ibid., p. 361. 

The lesson of evolution, at first thought to be 
the apotheosis of anarchic, individualistic com- 
petition, is now recognized to be quite the con- 
trary. — Webb's "Socialism in England," p. 82. 
(Swan, Sonnenschein.) 

Speaking of the age of which "John Wesley, 
Adam JSmith and Jean Jacques Rousseau were 
the prophets," Prof. Robert Ellis Thompson 
says, "It has left us a harvest of priceless results. 
But it always was an exaggeration, — a presenta- 
tion of half a truth as though it were the whole 
truth. Like all exaggerations it has produced an 
equal reaction, and we are now in the rebound of 
that movement." — Page 8, "The Divine Order of 
Human Society." 

There is certainly much in modern fatherhood 
which must fail to interpret God to the child, but 
fail in the opposite direction. We live in an age 
and a land of indulgence. ... In such a time 
over-indulgence, first of self and then of those for 
whom we are responsible, becomes a besetting 
sin. Children are allowed to have their own way, 

158 



without much reference to what kind of a way it 
is. Their every wish is indulged, even when 
good taste, or the comfort of others, or the child's 
own welfare must be sacrificed. It is so much 
easier to give in than refuse; and so we take 
credit for kindness to them, where in truth we 
are kind only to ourselves. The effect of this is 
seen in the manners before it is visible in the 
morals of the young. European observers are 
kind enough to say that the American traveler 
generally is a tolerable sort of a person, but that 
his children are the most intolerable torments to 
be found in the European resorts. — Ibid., pp. 

73> 74- 

Nor is it only the family that suffers through 
the abandonment of parental authority. Social 
discipline is corrupted at its very fountain-head. 
That reverence for authority which is funda- 
mental to all society can be taught only at home. 
— Ibid., p. j6. 

There are things a father can teach his child as 
no other human being can teach them, because 
he is invested naturally with an authority which 
he cannot delegate and which the best teachers 
can possess only to a limited extent. — Ibid., p. 

77- 

There are, I think, clear indications that the 
reign of agnosticism is almost over. — Prof. John 
Watson's "The Problem of Hegel," Philosophi- 
cal Review, Vol. IV, p. 353. 

The optimism which shuts its eyes to the 
misery and wickedness of the world was to him 
(Jesus) a false and delusive creed. The wretch- 

1.59 



edness and evil of man were only too palpable. — 
Prof. John Watson's "Christiantv and Idealism," 
p. 77. (The Macmillan Co.) 

Thus God works not upon but through the 
things which have come from His hands. Nature 
is not a dead machine, wielded by the hands of 
omnipotence, but it is instinct with that eternal 
principle which exhibits itself in the ever-recur- 
ring cycle of changes, inorganic and organic. — 
Ibid., p. 90. 

The false principle must show its bitter fruits, 
and must accomplish its perfect work before it 
completely reveals its true nature. Hence, the 
more it outwardly triumphs and shows its evil 
nature, the more surely is the way prepared for 
its final overthrow. — Ibid., p. 93. 

Social progress means a checking of the cos- 
mic process at every step and the substitution for 
it of another, which may be called the ethical 
process; the end of which is not the survival of 
those who happen to be fittest, in respect of the 
whole of the conditions which exist, but of those 
which are ethically the best. — Quoted from Hux- 
ley's ''Evolution and Morality" by Professor 
Watson who says, "These are perhaps the wisest, 
as they are almost the latest, words which Hux- 
ley ever wrote." — See "Christianity and Ideal- 
ism," p. 242. 

From the evolutionist point of view the mean- 
ing of the earlier stages must be interpreted in 
the light of the final stage, for it is only in the 
final stage that realty as a whole reveals what it 
truly is. — Ibid., p. 253. 

160 



The cosmopolitanism of the last century (18th) 
carried the abstract assertion of the equality of 
men to the paradox that civilization itself is a 
moral disadvantage, and that the genuine voice 
of humanity is to be heard only from the natural 
man, 'the noble savage.' — Prof. Edward Caird's 
''Evolution of Religion," p. 18, Vol. I. (Mac- 
millan & Co.) 

It is this impulse to revivify and reconstruct 
the facts, — to make the past into a living present, 
while yet we understand its inner meaning in a 
way in which the present can never be under- 
stood by those who live in it, — it is this that char- 
acterizes the modern scientific spirit and differ- 
entiates it so completely from a mere casual and 
external curiosity. — Ibid., p. 20. 

The life of Nature and of all things and beings 
that belong to the realm of Nature is a purely 
immediate or objective life; at best it is a life 
which contains only faint foreshadowings of the 
self-activity that belongs to the realm of spirit. — 
Rev. John Caird's "Introduction to the Phil- 
osophy of Religion," p. 248. (Macmillan & Co.) 

It is the essential characteristic of a spiritual 
self-conscious being that the opposition between 
itself and the world, and between its empirical 
and its ideal existence, is a conscious opposition, 
and that the conflict by which it develops itself 
is not the conflict of one blind force with other 
blind forces, but the deeper strife of impulse with 
reason, the inward war with self which is possible 
only for a nature allied on the one side to that 

161 



which is universal and infinite, on the other con- 
trolled by the brute force of instinct and ap- 
petite. — Ibid., pp. 249, 250. 

Moral and spiritual perfection does not and 
cannot come to us by nature, but only as the 
result of struggle and self-conquest. ... It is in 
the reaction against nature that the higher life of 
morality and religion is developed. — Ibid, p. 252. 

In one sense the members of the social organ- 
ism in which I live, the institutions, the civil and 
political organization of the community to which 
I belong, are outside and independent of me, and 
there are certain duties and obligations which 
they authoritatively impose on me. They con- 
stitute a moral order, an external or objective 
morality, to which I must submit. But, in an- 
other sense they are not foreign to me, they are 
more truly me than my private self. — Ibid., p. 
264. 

The life of duty does, and must bring us to 
self-harmony. ... It is only in beginning to live 
the higher life that we become aware of the bond- 
age which the lower imposes on us. — Ibid., p. 
268. 

Wherever science deals with phenomena, 
which instead of being constant or ever-recurring 
are the manifestations of a process of develop- 
ment, there it is impossible to understand the 
present without reference to the past. — Ibid., p. 
292. 

Of man above all other beings it is true that to 
know what he is, we must know what he has 
been. — Ibid., p. 294. See also pp. 298-300. 

162 



Nothing in the world is intelligible apart from 
its history, and man must be of all things the 
least so, because he is of all things the most com- 
plex, variable and richly endowed. — Prof. Robeit 
Flint's "Philosophy of History," p. i. (Charles 
Scribner's Sons.) 

For a concise and interesting statement of the 
nature and function of history, see Prof. Morris's 
"Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of His- 
tory," pp. 111-136. 

The unsatisfying nature of a life of mere pleas- 
ure and worldliness is well portrayed in Sir 
Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Buddha is 
kept in a veritable palace of pleasures, but after 
a time they pall on him and he longs to escape, 
which having been accomplished he searches for 
everlasting truth. His labors were rewarded. 
His infinite nature received its own. Dr. Samuel 
Johnson in "Rasselas" gives us a similar picture 
except that he reaches a "conclusion in which 
nothing is concluded." Some of the most beau- 
tiful lines ever written may be found in "Ecclesi- 
astes," concerning the vanity of a life of mere 
pleasure. — R. L. 

It is enough at present to point out what all 
the strongest of human souls have observed and 
reported as a fact of experience; namely, that 
through the endurance and the conquest over its 
own internal ills the spirit wins its best conscio-. 
fulfilment. . . . For tragedy wins our interest by 
making us suffer, and yet consent to endure, not 
the tragic hero's suffering, but our own, for the 
sake of the spiritual beauty that we thereby learn 

163 



to contemplate. Courage is glorious, because it 
involves a conquest over our own conscious 
shrinking in the presence of danger. Who fears 
not knows not conscious courage. Endurance 
is noble, because it includes a voluntary defeat of 
our own unwillingness to endure. And, in gen- 
eral, every form of more complex rational life 
means a triumph over ourselves whereby alone 
we win ourselves. Whoever has not faced prob- 
lems as problems, mysteries as mysteries, defeats 
as defeats, knows not what that completer pos- 
session of his own life means which is the out- 
come and also the present experience of triumph 
in the midst of finitude and disaster. For in the 
victorious warfare with finitude consists the per- 
fection of spirit. — Prof. Josiah Royce's "The 
World and the Individual," pp. 381, 382. (The 
Macmillan Co.) 

Oh! we're sunk enough here, God knows! but 
not quite so sunk that moments, 

Sure though seldom, are denied us, when the 
spirit's true endowments 

Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise 
it if pursuing 

Or the right way or the wrong way, to its tri- 
umph or undoing. 

— Browning's "Christina." 

It seems too much like a fate, indeed! 
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed. 
But what if I fail of my purpose here? 
It is but to "keep the nerves at strain, 

164 



To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, 
And baffled, get up and begin again, — 

So the chase takes up one's life, that's all. 
While, look but once from your farthest bound 
At me so deep in the dust and dark, 
No sooner the old hope goes to the ground 
Than a new one straight to the self-same mark, 
I shape me. 

— Browning's "Life in a Love." 

I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
forebore, 
And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
peers, 
The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears, 

Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
— Browning's "Prospice." 

In the "Last of the Barons" Bulwer thus de- 
scribes the contents of Book Sixth: "Wherein 
are opened some glimpses of the fate, below, 
that attends those who are better than others, 
and those who desire to make others better. 
Love, demagogy and science equally offspring 
of the same prolific delusion — viz., that mean 
souls, (the earth's majority) are worth the hope 
and the agony of noble souls, the everlastingly 
suffering and aspiring few." 

165 



REFERENCES. 

PAGE 

3. " Nature as positive observation," etc. Mallock's 
" Is Life Worth Living?" 

5. " From the homogeneous to the heterogeneous." 
See Spencer's "First Principles," Chap. XVII. 

7. "Man was formerly little less than an angel," 
Cf. with Schurman's "Agnosticism and Religion," 
Chap. I. 

"Not Spirits, yet to Heavenly Spirits bright 
Little inferior." " Paradise Lost," Book IV. 

7. "The ape and tiger." Tennyson's "In Memoriam,' 
CXVII. 

12. "The American child is the terror," etc. Prof. R. 
E. Thompson. 

14. Pestalozzi, like Shelley, came to see the mistakes 
of the naturalistic beliefs of his earlier life. The 
French Revolution showed him that evil grew out 
of man's character rather than out of institutions. 
11 He learned the great truth that in the absence of 
external impediments man is even less, than under 
pressure, disposed to seek his own moral and in- 
tellectual improvement." Pestalozzi enthusiasts 
are referred to "Educational Foundations" for 
February, 1901. 

21. "We must have order or we cannot teach." 
James L. Hughes's "How to Keep Order." 

22. Same work referred to. 

24. "We are compelled to say," etc. Prof. G. S. 
Morris's "Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of 
History." (Scott, Foresman and Co., Chicago.) 

166 



26. J. S. Mill. "Three Essays on Representative 
Government. ' ' 

27. Wm, T. Harris. Rosenkranz's "Phil, of Edu- 
cation," p. 27. 

27. "In philosophy, all that is new was once old." 
Prof. Knight's "Hume." (J. B. Lippincott.) 

33. " Parents are not good enough." Spencer's Edu- 
cation, Chap. III. 

36. "A knife that won't cut," etc. Dr. Oscar Gerson. 

43,44. Quotations from White's "School Manage- 
ment," pp. 17-19. 

45. " For in the isolated consciousness of the finite," 
etc. Prof. E. Caird' s "Evolution of Religion," 
Vol. I., p. 102. 

47. "The vital factor in the school is the teacher." 
White's "School Management," p. 19. 

48. "Inventory of the facts of mind." See p. 155. 

48. " Current psychology," etc. Prof. Bowne's " Met- 
aphysics," preface, p. vii. 

62. "I am whatsoever is." etc. Inscription on the 
temple of Isis. 

64, 65. Poetry from " In Memoriam." 

71. " It is rank with inexact science," etc. Quoted 
by Prof. Walker, "Political Economy," p. 400. 
Pages referred to in Spencer's "Education" cor- 
respond to the numbering found in Burt' s or Alli- 
son' s edition of " Education." 

167 



79- Lecky. " History ot Rationalism in Europe." 

1 10. John Locke was not the first to consider the mind 
as a tabula rasa. It is at least as old as Aristotle. 

1 16. Milton's apostrophe to wedded love — "Paradise 
Lost," Book IV. 

134. "The Deacon's Masterpiece," by Holmes. 

139. "Certainly we at present stand," etc. Prof. 
Knight's " Philosophy of the Beautiful," preface. 



168 



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